


Anarchists, Architects, and Archaeologists

by claytonphillips



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 38,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claytonphillips/pseuds/claytonphillips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor looks for River in the wake of A Good Man Goes to War. It all spills out from there. Alien planets! Canton! Young Time Lords! Fighting! The Master! Shenanigans! Angels! Time Agents! And More!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dying

-Prologue-

Melody looked again into the waters of the broken fountain at eyes that were not her own.

She sighed orange light and started. Quickly, she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. But, as usual, people— New Yorkers, to be exact —took no notice of the grubby girl, barely thirteen and small for her age — this time. It helped that it was broad daylight. The glow around her breath and fingertips would have shone like a beacon for hours if she had died in the nighttime again.

Turning back to the water, Melody inspected the long, black hair which now surrounded her darkened face.

It was wrong. All of it.

Her eyes weren’t that shade of brown, they hadn’t been brown at all. Her nose hadn’t stuck out like it did now. And worse, everything smelled different.

Admittedly, that could be from living on the streets. Dirty alleys, cold nights, that urine smell that seemed to be everywhere in New York, these were the realities of Melody’s life now. But it was better than… something.

Melody didn’t like to think about Florida. When she forced the issue during the rare, quiet moments she allowed herself, she realized that there wasn’t much left of that time of her life inside her mind.

She had lived in a house with a funny, sad, little man. She hadn’t liked the house. Something lived in there that wasn’t Melody and wasn’t the sad little man. But even when she was brave and forced herself to concentrate for hours, Melody couldn’t remember what the something in the house had been. In a way, that scared her more than anything.

Whole pieces of her life were missing. Like her face. Like her parents.

She remembered some things. She remembered her bed with the stars that twinkled above her, chiming against one another when she brushed them with her hand. She remembered the picture of her mother.

She used to hold that picture and look at her mother and look at herself and felt warm, safe, even in the drafty attic that was her bedroom. The sad man had never told Melody that the woman in the picture was Melody’s mother, but Melody knew.

She saw it in her mother’s hair, like Melody’s hair. In her freckles and her eyes. Eyes and hair that weren’t hers anymore. Melody winked back a tear. Who was she now if not her mother’s daughter? Was she someone else’s daughter? Someone with black hair and dark skin and brown eyes? Was that how dying worked?

Most of all, however, Melody remembered the suit. You can’t go walking around without the suit, a voice in the back of her head repeated, matter-of-factly. Bad things happen to little girls who don’t stay in their suits. They die.

But something had happened. The suit was broken.

And Melody had died. Again and again.

First she had run, as if it would do any good. She had run all the way to New York, which, she had always thought, was the natural place to run to. Wasn’t that how it always was in stories? But then she had died.

And then died again. And again. And again.

Each time she tried to fix it, but she only lasted a few weeks before dying once more.

First her hair had been yellow, her arms too long. Everything had tasted coppery and she developed a taste for pigeon. She lost that taste when she died next, but she still ate the birds when she could. They were fat and everywhere and Melody was oh, so fast.

“Can’t catch me,” Melody said to herself as she smiled for the first time that day. “I’m Melody Pond and Melody Pond is a super hero”. It sounded right; she just hoped it was true.

-Chapter 1-

Melody ran.

Across the rooftops, she bounded from building to building, looking down, in moments of pure elation, at the alleyways below. Each jump was a thrill and she laughed before hitting down on the next rooftop.

Hard.

Harder than anyone, she had come to realize, should rightly be allowed to land and keep running. But then, that was Melody. She had met other children, here on the streets. Some of them were nice, some of them not so nice. Some had tried to hurt her and she had hurt them back in turn. None of them, however, could run as fast as Melody or jump as high or catch as many pigeons.

But none of them died like Melody either, and when Melody died, and her hair was different and her skin was different and eyes were different, none of the children wanted anything to do with her anymore, even the nice ones.

That’s not what dying is, they would say. Dying is the all-over, when they catch you or the snow freezes you and you can’t move anymore. But Melody knew what happened when little girls were out of their suits. They died.

She didn’t need them anyhow, she thought as she bounded again onto a water tower and climbed, she was an excellent climber, to its roof. She looked out over the buildings west of SoHo, unflinchingly at the setting sun, and tried to ignore that she was doomed to die soon.

—

Canton wasn’t happy.

Canton had rarely been happy in the wake of ‘69. Sure, yes, national hero. Commendation this, secret medal that, it was all rather paltry when you couldn’t remember the bulk of what you had done to save the Earth. He had certainly saved it from something. The Doctor had assured him.

The Doctor. That, Canton thought, was the problem. He was possibility, the unknown, the far-out, out of this world crazy shit the kids had sang and danced about even a few years ago. But the kids weren’t singing as loud anymore.

Woodstock, it seemed, had been a dizzying height for the nation’s counter-culture from which it had plummeted. Now, it seemed, they were singing to sooth their own insecurities. Dealing with the knowledge that they were living in the aftermath of something magic, but something that real life was doomed to penetrate.

So, it seemed, was Canton.

After the Doctor, going to sleep in Richard’s arms after a night of lovemaking and the same three arguments wasn’t enough anymore. The secrecy and the thrill were enough for Richard, that had always been the problem. That was why one of them had tried to leverage his reputation as a skilled agent for exception from centuries of stigma and the other had stayed silent, protecting his career. That hadn’t gone well. But it was the past.

And still, for a few crazy weeks, it was like everything had changed. But then those weeks passed and the world was basically the same for everyone else as it had been before the Doctor, before the day of the moon. Same shit, different day.

But Canton, even if he couldn’t remember who he and the Doctor and Amy and Rory and River had been fighting against, could remember the fight. And he could remember the Doctor. And now he was gone. And dammit, it wasn’t the same thing for him. It had to mean _something_ or what was it all for?

So when a British outfit called Torchwood had approached him and told him that, frankly, they could care less about the genre of people he took to bed, that they were interested in having an agent in America, that they were interested in dealing with the same sensitive subject matter that Canton had signed away his rights to talk about with all but the highest U.S. officials… well, it had been easy. But it hadn’t made Canton happy.

That was a year ago. An exceedingly quiet year, full of nights drinking alone and sex that didn’t mean anything because his other half was selling his soul to the increasingly paranoid Nixon administration. Canton had more money than he could spend on whiskey or men, but apparently not enough to fill the hole in his life that the Doctor had blown. What he certainly didn’t have was work.

Canton had come to realize that his employment had been more about intelligence than any particular need for his services.They had been very interested, at first, about the Doctor. Something about an agent for a rival unit back across the Atlantic. But Canton hadn’t felt much inclined to letting another country in on the business of the United States Secret Service. He still wasn’t _that_ kind of man.

The one time he was too far in his cups and let himself talk about an argument he had had with the Doctor about shaving his beard, about bow ties and “cool” and his big blue box, well, that had been the end of that.

The Doctor rumored to be working with the other agency wasn’t young or bearded and he didn’t wear bow ties. He certainly didn’t have a big blue box. Maybe there was more than one, Canton had suggested, but he doubted it.

In the face of Canton’s failure to be useful, he was left to languish. Which he did. Spectacularly.

Sipping his scotch, Canton sighed and frowned to himself. Looking across his dimly lit, dusty pit of an office, he wondered what Richard was doing at that moment; or perhaps Rory.

Then, Canton was thrown out of his chair by the sudden blaring of a telephone. It wasn’t until he picked himself off the floor, brushing empty bottles aside with his banged up arm, one of which was not entirely empty, that he noticed that it was the _other_ phone that was ringing. Cursing to himself, he answered.

“Canton,” he said.

“And C is for…,” prompted a harsh female voice on the other end.

“Canton?” tried Canton. Then, fighting through the drink towards a protocol which had never before been actualized, “C as in Cyberman, A as in Atraxi, errr. Do you want me to do the whole thing?”

“No, that is sufficient,” said the voice. “I don’t suppose you’re in any conceivable shape to be of any use —- whatsoever?”

“Depending on the work, it’s entirely possible,” responded Canton, smiling and suddenly believing it was true. God, just a bit of good work. The kind of work like when he ran with the Doctor.

“There’s been a sighting. In the city. Of —” she paused, not wanting to commit to her sentence, “Something. Something like this Doctor you told us about.”

“Doctor who?” tried Canton.

“Don’t play games,” The other voice snapped. “You may not have had the information we wanted, but you told us all we needed to know about this _other_ Doctor. Enough to know that something is roaming New York with the same qualities.”

“Extra Terrestrial?” asked Canton, a whole year subliming from his posture.

“Maybe,” said the voice. “We won’t know until you tell us.”  
“Out of this world,” smiled Canton across the phone. He was back.

—

Bouncing off of the year 81,453, the Tardis swooped through the time vortex like a pelican might swoop if it had four-and-a-half wings.

At the control console, the Doctor just laughed.

His fingers tingled as they switched chaotically, expertly from dial to switch to lever to pulley-thing to faucet to D-pad to the astrolabe. They hadn’t tingled like that since the London Blitz. Not the time with the Daleks. The time when everyone had lived. And that wasn’t now.

Suddenly, a train of thought concerning Rose Tyler, a Red Bicycle, the year 1995, and a promise that might shatter the time/space continuum — again — if left unfulfilled, crossed the Doctor’s mind, itself Grand Central Terminal, before being directed to the “Not now, I have all the time in the Universe” station, some miles away.

And, again, the Doctor laughed.

1970, ought to do it, he thought to himself. Terribly sorry to let poor River — Melody — whoever she ends up being — on her own but she’s a tough old — young — girl and I can’t be too sure where I’ve been before or later. Best choose a nice, round number.

“America, 1970, Melody Pond, and — why not? — Canton Everett Delaware The Third! that sound about right, Sexy?” asked the Doctor, gleefully, to a companion not bound to one relative dimension in time or space.

The Tardis whooped it’s weezy whoop in response, setting The Doctor, bumpily as he liked, square in the middle of Washington Square Park. New York. October 10th, 1970.

“Ah, yes,” said the Doctor to himself, stepping out of the Tardis, into the crowds that frequented the park. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands. Daily. And it was raining.

“Hmmmmmmmm,” he tried again, his smile, hair, and the tingling of his fingers dampening, “This may be a tricky one.”


	2. Raining

One thing Melody hated was the rain. You couldn't outrun it. You couldn't trick it by being clever. You couldn't beat it up. You just got all wet. And cross.

The worst part was that it didn't always take Melody by surprise. Sometimes, she knew it was going to rain, just how she knew something bad was going to happen to someone around her mere moments before it did. The problem was that knowing about the rain didn't change that Melody had nowhere to go to stay dry. Normally.

Oh, sure, there were alleyways, cardboard boxes, newspaper blankets, but when it was raining were the times you really had to look out for people. New York was always crowded, yes, but it was also big. During the normal times, even the night times, no one would really ever bother you. But when it was raining, when even the grimiest dumpster was an escape from the soaking wet, bound to attract all sorts… Needless to say, it was best to avoid confrontation in close quarters. That was a lesson you learned quickly.

Thus, rather than risk the fleeting safety of an alley, Melody took to the rooftops, wondering exactly how soaked she would get before making it to her secret hiding spot.

Forty-two blocks later, the answer appeared to be "very, very" as Melody completed her latest amazing feat, a jump not over a mere alleyway, but Broadway itself, all that separated her from her super special secret hiding spot. And Simon.

But the real amazing feat was that she made the jump, caught an unlucky pigeon in mid-flight, and touched down softly as bird, her bare feet sticking the landing instead of coming out from under her as they sometimes did when the rooftops were slicked by rain. Snapping the bird's neck and tiptoeing softly across the rooftop, Melody rounded the fortress of aluminum siding she and Simon had stolen off of a passing scrap truck two weeks back. Well, Melody had stolen it, but it had been Simon's idea. It had been Melody's idea to paint it blue, but the paint hadn't been very good and it was already chipping away in some places, running off in others to expose the metal underneath. Grinning at the hilarity sure to ensue, Melody jumped through the window of the fort.

"Kablammo!" Melody shouted.

Simon jumped out of his pants. Well, his glasses, more accurately. Simone was twelve and on the streets too. He didn't talk about what had happened for him to end up there, but he must have had a family at some point, Melody thought. Someone had to have bought him those glasses. You can't steal those kinds of things. Melody knew. And even if you could, Simon couldn't. He was a walking disaster, not just slow, but small and cowardly. But he didn't care that Melody was different, even that she died occasionally. And he always shared his comics.

"Mel!" He exclaimed, "Don't do that! I was reading."

"Pigeon?" she tried, holding it out.

"No thank you", Simon said. With attitude. "I happen to like birds cooked."

"Baby," Melody stuck her tongue out as she sat sown cross legged and started wringing out her hair. Why was it so long this time?

"I'm not a baby!" insisted Simon, indignantly. "You're supposed to cook birds. You don't just go munching on them, heads first."

"Why not?" Melody had heard this argument before but remained unconvinced.

"Well, diseases. Or something," Simon tried.

"I don't worry about diseases," Melody said, adding in some attitude of her own as she chomped down on the pigeon's head. It wasn't great, but she made a show of relishing some indescribable taste just to be contrary. Besides, she knew she would be long dead by the time anything that other children talked about, fevers, clear poop, vomiting, overtook her. That was what happened when little girls were out of their suits. Not sickness. Death. And when she died, she just started over.

Pigeons, while not as yummy as they used to be, were still better than the half-eaten burgers that Simon scrounged out the trash. The burgers tasted… wrong in a way that Melody had never been able to properly explain.

"Anyhow," Simon ventured, trying not to look as Melody bit down into more feathery parts of the carcass then discarded it. "Spider-man or X-men?"

"Oh X-men, definitely," Melody said, brightening immediately and spitting out feathers. "I don't like Spider-man."

"What's wrong with Spider-man?" Simon was indignant again. Melody stood up, her head only a few inches from the aluminum sealing, still pinging with the metallic sound of raindrops.

"Spider-man is all 'Oh, no, I'm so sad. I only have one parent and a home. Woe is me!'" Melody completed this impression, arms flailing in despair to her sides, by falling into Simon's lap.

She giggled. He giggled. It made her feel warm despite how soaked she was.

"Besides," she said, with great authority, "I don't know what's so great about jumping real high and climbing on things. I can do that." She snatched the X-men comic, only missing its cover and first few pages, out of Simon's hand.

"Well the rest of us can't," Simon said, more defensively than Melody had expected. Then. "Did you … change again?" He squinted through the half light that the aluminum siding let in.

Melody harrumphed.

"Yes! It's rubbish, isn't it?" She looked down at her arms. Was it just her or did they have more hair on them than normal? Bodies, she thought.

"You look," Simon tried to find the right words, "more like me?"

Melody hadn't really considered it. But the black hair, the height, the darker, tan complexion. Yes, she did indeed look more like Simon than she had when they has met two months ago. Strange.

"Don't be flattered," Melody snapped at her companion, not knowing what to make of it, but not prepared to wonder aloud,

"It's not like I can very well control what happens when I die." Simon would hate that. He made a point of calling what Melody did "changing" instead of dying. But Melody knew all the same.

"Well," Simon said, not taking Melody's bait, just getting sad, "I guess I'll just read Spider-man."

"Don't throw out that bird," Melody said, not looking up from her X-men. "I want it for later."

\--

Mike sold umbrellas when it was raining. When it wasn't raining, he didn't do much of anything, which wasn't to say he didn't still sell umbrellas, just that no one ever wanted to buy them.

See, the problem was people. People always needed an umbrella but never realized it until they were being rained down upon and it was far too late. He had tried to explain it to many a passerby on the street, but mostly they just looked at him as if he was mentally deranged.

Which, Mike had to admit, was understandable. The man who had realized the importance of a good umbrella was the man who had elevated himself far above the normal social concerns of any population of people. It was only right that they might perceive his mental prowess as madness.

So was the way of these things.

Thus, with no less than twenty umbrellas adorning his person, as they always were, just waiting for the occasion to shine, Mike shouted.

"Umbrellas! One for a dollar! Two for three dollars!"

"Hello," said an amiable if sudden voice from behind Mike. Mike turned.

"Um," said Mike. The passerby was soaking, his hair plastered to his skull, his professor's coat a deep, wet brown instead of the tan it might have been normally. He was smiling, his eyes bright and invasive.

"I was wondering if you might have seen a little girl around here? Well, I think it might be a little girl. She could be a largish girl or not a girl at all." The man paused for a moment at this thought. "Come to think of it, I should have probably asked River a little something about the sequence of events, spoilers be damned. But you know how it is, Mike? It's Mike, right?" He didn't seem out of breath, but paused a moment, his eyes prompting Mike to answer.

"Um, Yes?" Mike tried, his voice hoarse, only partially from a morning of shouting at people.

"Good, love a Mike," The man smiled as if he was trying to assure Mike of the absolute verity of this while straightening his red, drenched bow tie.

"Now, anyhow. Where was I? Oh right, the girl. Yes, there's this girl. Probably small. Probably a girl. Could be a big or could be a boy. Or a horse, now that I think of it. Do you think that's likely? No, probably not a horse. Unless she really wanted to be a horse. River would have probably told me if she was a horse. Well, there was this one Time L --" The man stopped suddenly, looking at Mike as if Mike has broached a subject this man was offended by. Shaking his finger and looking at Mike as if he wasn't about to play Mike's games whatever those may be, the man continued.

"So have you seen her? Red hair? Or not? If you've seen anyone walking around in an Apollo Space Suit, that's probably her, but that doesn't seem likely what with the sequence of events." A pause as Mike gulped and the soaked man waited, hands behind his back.

"Um, no," started Mike eventually. "No little girls around here. Well, except that one who jumps across the rooftops on Thursdays. Not that anyone believes me about that."

It was true, no one believed Mike about the little girl who bounded over his alley any more than they did the merits of umbrellas when rain was nowhere to be seen.

"Thursdays?" repeated the man, his brow furrowing upon the idea, hands resting upon his pronounced chin in an exaggerated display of thoughtfulness. "How odd."

And then just as suddenly, "No, that doesn't seem very likely. But you tried, Mike. You lot always try. Admirable, really." And with that, the man turned on his heels and walked South, the exact direction, Mike would reflect later, that the little girl always seemed to run on Thursdays.

And then, as he was walking away, "Hey mister, do you want an umbrella? Only a dollar."

"No thanks, got one," said the man, turning back and producing a patched, worn umbrella which Mike would have sworn was not there a moment ago. Its handle was styled into a distinct, red question mark. He leaned on it, regarding Mike with a sudden curiosity.

"Why ever do you ask?"

"Well," began Mike before gesturing one, umbrella-laden arm to the ensuing downpour. The man glanced around before noticing the rain. He laughed aloud and pointed at Mike as if to say 'Ah, right you are. Good on you.' Then he turned back around and walked, soaked, through the rain, his umbrella swinging at his side, question mark hooked into his coat pocket.

"Well," said Mike to himself, as the man disappeared down Lafayette, "Can't blame a man for trying."

\--

The Doctor laughed to himself as he speed-sauntered down the crowded street, careful to spare the feelings of pedestrians as he expertly wove in and out and around them in an array of movements which, he supposed, to the outside observer, would resemble the frantic dancing of a drunk.

"And who says I can't dance?" The Doctor chuckled to himself, sidestepping an old lady carrying groceries who was so startled by his sudden proximity that she dropped her burden.

The Doctor would have stayed to help pick up her things or at the very least felt slightly bad. But really, he thought to himself, it's better she not run across that squirrel she would have two blocks away and break her ankle, isn't it? Yes, that seemed best.

Anyway, River -- Melody -- was out there somewhere. Southwards. Running. He laughed again, rain streamed down his face. From here it would just be Amy and Melody and Rory in Tardis. Or in Leadworth. Or in the Tardis… yes, hopefully in the Tardis.

And from there it would be all whizzing about and sexy space vampires and shenanigans again. Yes, that's the stuff, he thought as he jumped over an unhappy Scottish terrier whose owner had decided the rain offered the unique opportunity of a walk and a bath.

The Doctor hurried on, counted his eggs, and hoped he was the only one looking.

Wrongly.


	3. Meeting

"So you're the queer," Agent Lee began in a way which was not a question.

He said it like he was from Norfolk, but to Canton's untrained ear it just sounded English. His face was stone and his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses which matched his dark suit. It might have been more intimidating if Canton hadn't spent twelve years in the FBI and twenty-five years fully aware of his sexuality. Honestly, he was just about done with hiding who he was.

"Is that going to be a problem?" Canton said, putting out his hand, but keeping his face still aside from a raised eyebrow of inquiry.

"Oh, of course not!" Lee burst, his face breaking into a cheshire grin, more unnerving than any posturing could have been. He shook Canton's hand the smallest fraction of a moment too long before breaking, and pulled down his right shirtsleeve to reveal a small tattoo on his inner wrist. It looked like a horseshoe with wings.

"Anglican, you see? No, all that's between you and the aspect of the Almighty of your own choosing far as I'm concerned."

Canton had not been aware the English Church was so liberal in its stance towards homosexuality. But then, he had never been overseas. It certainly explained why Torchwood had been so nonchalant in hiring someone like him.

Sliding back into the booth, Canton began to pick apart the eggs he had ordered while waiting for his new partner. This was the earliest he had been up in fourth months, almost noon now, and he wasn't as interested in Agent Lee's faith as much as he was surviving the morning hours. The eggs helped. The coffee helped less.

"I suppose you're wondering why the boys upstairs flew me over from HQ," Lee began again, maintaining his grin, oblivious to Canton's prioritization. "Across the pond, you know."

"Not really," said Canton, not looking up from his two over-easy and toast.

"I've been drunk for about as long as I've been with the agency. Maybe a bit longer. There's no reason for anyone to think I'd be capable of handling a mission of significant importance."

It was true, and didn't hurt Canton any more than the other uncomfortable truths about himself that he had come to terms with. The receding hairline. The height. The sex with men.

"And can you?" Agent Lee asked, seeming genuinely interested.

"If I have to do something. I do it. No half-measures", Canton replied, pulling down his own darkened glasses to make the point, "But I do it significantly better if I happen to be interested. You boys have my interest. So why don't you fill me in on the specifics?"

"Okay," said Lee, his smile fading, but lasting a bit around the lips, "Let me tell you about Melody Pond."

\--

It was getting worse.

"No," Melody said aloud to herself as she felt the telltale signs she had come to know. The cramping in the stomach, the loud, unbearable beating in the place adjacent from her heart, the glowing. "It's only been a day!"

And before Simon could fully react, himself just woken by her shouts across the floor of the fort, before Melody could get out in the open so as to not blow off the roof, before she could scream, Melody died blazing. Again.

\--

It was almost embarrassing just how easy it had been to catch word of Melody Pond, one girl in a city of eight million. At every other street corner or alleyway, there was some poor fool who had seen or heard tell of the impossible girl who leaped tall buildings, ate pigeons, and even, according to one poor bum, pushing his grocery cart full of essentials, the ability to breath fire. Of course, he also claimed that the night he had seen the girl, he had lost ten years of his life, becoming, as far as he or anyone else could tell, twenty five again. He was quite insistent about this point. The Doctor thanked him, informed the man that the scent he appeared so intent on cultivating would have made him a veritable sex god on no small number of planets in the Andromeda galaxy -- well, aside from the problem of his hair -- and left. It was tea time, after all. The information still troubled him.

But that's impossible, thought the Doctor, dipping his jammy dodger into his steaming cup of tea, twelfth century Baghdad even though his stocks were running low. Absolutely, utterly, perhaps wonderfully, impossible. Which meant it was true, more than likely. The Doctor sighed as he sat on a park bench, back in Union Square, drying out from the night's rain.

If any of the hundreds of park denizens wondered at the professor in the bow tie using a Tang Dynasty bone china cup and saucer to drink afternoon tea while site on a park bench, well they kept it to themselves. To be fair, the cup and saucer weren't Tang Dynasty style, he had just commissioned them there. It was so hard to find good cups in this century. He should talk to someone about that, after all this Melody stuff was sorted. Maybe he and River could go together. She liked tea, didn't she?

"I suppose I'll have to do something about that," he said to himself, his most reluctant companion. "Maybe some stealth lessons on the side. She's a long way from breaking out of Storm Cage."

The Doctor was suddenly more aware than ever just how staggeringly little he knew about River. Aside from the fact that she was dead. Well, in a computer. Well, dead in a computer. But, everybody dies eventually.

"Everybody lives, too," The Doctor comforted himself, "Sometimes."

\--

Canton was incredulous.

"You mean all this Torchwood nonsense is in response to a half-century grudge concerning the royal family and lycanthropy?" He said, struggling to keep pace with Agent Lee who had the advantage of longer legs with which came superior altitudes.

"Yes, Victoria was quite cross about the whole thing." Agent Lee replied, "I mean really, the Doctor should know better messing around with the royals like that. It never ends well. Did I even tell you about Elizabeth?" Lee didn't turn back to ask this, he was looking for his car.

"You mean the Virgin Queen?" Canton ventured. He wasn't the best with royal lineages, but he recognized the moniker.

"No, the one with the whale, but actually yeah that's another good example" Lee said, the pointed at his found car, walking towards it with even more speed and purpose.

"Come again?" Canton hurried after Lee.

"Oh, right. You might want to keep that all to yourself. Especially the werewolf bit. Won't be common knowledge for fifty-odd years. You can forgive some light treason, can't you, Canton?" He was rummaging around in the trunk of a teal 1964 Rambler.

"Well I suppose if they have some sort of plan towards transparency…" Canton resolved to ignore most of what Lee ranted on about in the interest of staying in control of the situation. It seemed easy to do seeing as he only understood half of it all. Wait, had he mentioned the Doctor?

"Right, good man. Now, what do you think of this?" Lee held up what appeared to be a movie camera which had been built out of an old children's lunch-box.

"I think that I just ate," Canton tried.

"Yes, I noticed the lunchbox too, but this is oh so much more." Lee turned it over and studied it, hungrily.

"The agency found it last year in London. As far as my superiors can tell. Ultra high tech, or it would be if it wasn't made mostly out of old lunch-boxes, movie cameras, transceivers, and a microwave." He looked back at Canton, handing the device to him for inspection.

Canton tried to look interested.

"But still. Alien intelligence in this old hodgepodge. Old High Galifreyan far as our archaeologists can tell." With this, Lee took it back, possessively, "If all the Gallifreyans had had to work with was lunch-boxes, radios, and microwaves."

The point, Canton supposed, was that the Gallifreyans, whoever they were, had had considerably more to work with beyond lunch-boxes, radios, and microwaves. He nodded as if he understood.

"Ah", he said and Lee seemed satisfied. And then, "What does it do?"

"What does it do?!" Lee began excitedly, then more sullenly, "Well, honestly, not too much unless you happen to be in the presence of some sort of complicated time/space event." Lee brightened up,"But then! Well, it goes 'ping'." He turned it on, it began going 'ping' immediately.

"Well," Lee said, a little embarrassed, "You have to account for background levels and --"

"Probably me, Canton interrupted, "I was in a time machine once. It's in my file. If they didn't go into it at HQ, I can't really talk about it beyond that."

"Gotcha," Lee said, seeming relieved, "We'll have to calibrate."

"Sorry about that," said Canton, untruthfully. Dealing with the manic Lee would have been test even without the blazing noonday sun and his marked lack of blood alcohol content.

"Not to worry," Lee slammed down his trunk and began tinkering with a dial. "This thing kills birds like you wouldn't believe, don't know what that's all about."

It was going to be a long day.


	4. Finding

"I think that may have cured my cataracts," said Simon, bewildered, looking into his glasses but not through them. "Is that what it's always like? All orange fire coming out of your head and hands?"

"Your what?" Melody asked. She knew what cataracts meant, but she just wasn't listening. She was looking at her hands. They were lighter this time. Also bigger.

"My eyes," Simon said absently. Then, looking at the wreckage they were standing in, "If all that destroyed the fort, why didn't it burn your clothes? Or me, for that matter?"

"That's good, Simon," said Melody. Her new hands went to her new hair. It was barely there. "Oh, no!" Melody shouted, louder than she had intended, "I'm a boy!"

"What?!" Simon looked over, "No you're not. Probably." He squinted. "Maybe you should check?" he tried.

As it turned out, Melody was still a girl. Just one with short, chestnut hair.

This did nothing for her mood.

Neither did the stomach pains, unintentional shouting, and cravings for some kind of food she had trouble describing. Orange. With brown parts outside and yellow things. But not, she insisted to Simon several times, chocolate covered caramel carrots.

Finally, she went off to find whatever it was she needed.

"Bring back food!" Simon called after her, already in the process of assembling what remained of his comic book collection from the wreckage of their fort.

"I always bring back food!" Melody called back, cross.

"No pigeons! Food I can eat! Hamburgers! Or carrots!"

"No carrots! Carrots are intolerable," she yelled, an opinion she had not realized she possessed before this moment. Didn't she sort of like carrots? Where were these new opinions coming from?

"Just hamburgers then!" Simon tried again, his voice trailing away.

But Melody was already five rooftops away.

\--

Tea time was over, the Doctor realized, as a Time Lord -- or something very much like one -- regenerated somewhere in a three mile radius. He concentrated but that was as exact as he could get. His nose started to bleed from the strain.

It wasn't that the signal was faint. Just the opposite. It was too loud. Everywhere.

Spasming under the weight of it all, the Doctor fell out of his park bench, one of his last good teacups shattering on the ground beside him.

It didn't help that the Doctor hadn't felt the presence of a Time Lord, especially not one crying out with that much pain, sadness, desperation, all the while regenerating, since the Time War. And that was centuries ago. Centuries? Well, who could keep track? A long time.

Well, The Master. Well, all of Gallifrey that other time. But still, not this body. And he had been caught unprepared.

Up until this point, he hadn't had an especial need to keep his mental defenses about him, last of the Time Lords and all.

Well, excepting his sharp wit, a keen mind, and grace under pressure.

But still, the Doctor chided himself, he should have begun shielding exercises after that time with the Flesh. Maybe then he would have been able to filter through Melody's pain better. Gotten a better lock.

But then there had been Amy. And the Clerics. And the Headless Monks. And Stuff. There was always Stuff.

He was getting sloppy.

"Old fool," he cursed himself, panting. "Can't be that careless from now on. Not if you're not the last anymore."

And as he spoke it, the thought hit him. It was a thought he hadn't let himself contemplate in a long, long time. It felt wrong, but warming.

Big.

Like something too good to be true. If he hadn't been in so much pain, he might have laughed. Just a little.

"She can regenerate," the Doctor said to no one in particular, blood dripping down his face, square on the concrete, a bewildered smile breaking over his face.

Not alone.

\--

"That wasn't background," Lee exclaimed, almost bouncing with enthusiasm. He took off his sunglasses and studied the dials on the side of the machine.

Canton had to agree. About twenty seconds before, the device had begun to ping rapidly, and, to the dismay of Canton and everyone else who happened to be walking down Crosby, loudly. Very loudly. Just terrible, annoying, ear-shattering stuff.

Agent Lee didn't seem to mind at all.

"Okay," he said, turning a dial which made the pinging slower but did nothing about the volume, "it's --"

He turned around until the pinging sped up. "This way!" He jogged on ahead of Canton, who hesitated, looked annoyed at everything that was in front of him, and followed.

Jogging.

Had languishing really been that bad? Trying to shake of his mood, he admitted that yes, it had been.

But that didn't make this any better.

Appearances aside, Canton could keep a fast pace if he was inclined to do so. Deciding he was indeed inclined, he caught Lee with no trouble. Lee looked to his side, smiling. All the time smiling.

"Canton! You made it!" Lee wasn't even sweating. "This is -- literally -- the best that things could have gone. I am having the best day. Now, what did I tell you about Melody Pond?"

"Little girl, alien, raised by the government, broke out, killing people on the streets?" Canton said between pants. It had been a while.

"Exactly! Possibly eating them too. You know how these creepy aliens can be."

Canton felt a creeping sensation at the back of his neck. Did he know? For a moment, he felt he did.

The pinging was speeding up as Lee ran down a particularly rank alleyway.

The pinging slowed. Then stopped.

Lee stopped, looked at the device, looked at the dial. Then he hit it. Hard. Nothing happened.

Lee sat down cross-legged and put his hands over his head. Furtively, he sniffed the air.

"Smell anything, Canton?" he said, a desperate air coming out in his voice.

"Piss?" Canton tried.

"Urine, yes," Lee agreed, rocking back and forth a little, the device still in his left hand, his knuckles going white at the handle.

"Do you know what that means?" Lee said, too loud.

"That this alley is disgusting?" Canton said, looking around. It was.

"Yes!" Lee said. A sob almost about audible around the edges of his raised voice. "And she's winning!"

Canton decided, in the wake of the grown man having a tantrum sitting down in an alley, that he wouldn't inquire as to that last bit. Instead, he changed the subject.

"Agent Lee?" Canton started. Trying to keep it professional despite the circumstances.

Agent Lee nodded but didn't say anything.

"Why would we use a device that tracks time anomalies to track an alien girl?" Canton had been thinking over it earlier before his train of thought had been shattered by pinging. And running.

Lee stopped rocking. He didn't say anything first. Then a smile creeped back onto his face and he rose from his sitting position with a grace that Canton had never before seen in a man wearing pants that tight. He took off his sunglasses. It was the first time that Canton had ever seen Agent Lee's eyes.

He told himself that the red about them was just because Lee had been crying. But he didn't believe it. Those eyes were, well, hungry.

"Oh, you're sharp," Lee said, his eyes making his smile all the more terrifying, "No flies on you. But I suppose that's my fault. I over-explain. It's a crutch. I'm aware." He rolled his eyes along with his head.

It was actually the first time Canton had encountered someone being both intimidating and self-deprecatory simultaneously. It wouldn't be the last.

"I was just wondering," Canton said, acutely aware all of a sudden just how much taller Agent Lee was than him. Quite a bit taller.

"Well, of course you were!" Lee said, somewhere between glee and rage, "How could you n--"

"Just hamburgers then!" a small voice, the voice of a child, sounded from above.

Agent Lee stopped. Eyes going wide, Lee's rage-smile faded. Slowly, Lee turned the machine in his left hand upwards.

It began to ping.

"Oh," said Agent Lee, a calm that masked a tempest of excitement, "This is the best day."

\--

Melody felt like being alone.

As much as she liked Simon -- she did like him, didn't she? -- being with people, especially people her own age, felt wholly unnatural at times.

Not all the time. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes she laughed and built forts and read comics, as children were supposed to do. She had decided this in the months since meeting Simon, who liked nothing more than laughing and building forts and reading comics.

But there were other times, especially when she had just died. Or when she had had the dream when she was back in the suit again. Or in the white room. Or the one with her mother. Not the good dream, the bad one when she shot her. Or the one at the lake. Especially the one at the Lake.

Those were the times when she had to be alone again. Sometimes for weeks.

She had been alone all her life. What she could remember of her life which, she admitted to herself, wasn't too terribly much. Was that just what she was?

If her mom and dad were there would she still feel like this? Would she not be able to bring herself to be around them for more than once every few days except by sheer force of will? Was she that wretched?

Would she still die?

"Am I that broken?" Melody asked herself, gasping out a puff of orange. She had been crying. "Broken and alone."

"No," said a voice behind her.

Melody started an turned. Behind her, where he couldn't have been before, was a young, thin man with huge hair and a huge chin. He wore a brown coat and a red bow tie. He sat cross-legged, his hands clasped in front of him. He wasn't smiling, but looking at her with concern. His eyes were old eyes.

Melody felt she should say something. But she just stared.

"You're not broken. And you're not alone," the man said. "I promise."

Melody walked towards the man and sat down facing him.

"But you do need help," he continued, and smiled, his eyes brightening, "Luckily, I'm the Doctor." The Doctor held out his hand.


	5. Taking

Canton didn't like climbing fire escapes.

In movies it seemed natural. The star would pull down the oiled ladder, climb up, run across and up the stairs, all along the side of the building. No one ever struggled with the very much unlubricated, unwilling ladder, glued to the railings by age. No one ever had trouble pulling himself over the area that separated ladder from floor. No one ever had to pace themselves because they had been jogging a good twenty minutes previously.

It was all rather misleading, Canton thought, feeling a poor excuse for a secret agent and not one bit in a movie.

Agent Lee ran up fire escapes like a movie star.

When Canton pulled himself over the rooftop, Lee already had his gun out. At what appeared to be a twelve year old boy.

"It's okay, Canton," Lee called without looking back. "I've found a small boy. Best get out your firearm." The boy was awestruck, a deer in headlights. Around him were scraps of old comic books that had been partially assembled into piles but mostly scattered and charred.

"You serious?" Canton's eyebrow did that thing again. But this time it was a reflex to cover his stomach sinking. Lee was crazy and Canton was going to have to deal with that sooner rather than later.

Canton still got out his revolver. For appearances, he told himself. Best not to antagonize the crazy man with the gun. This was a lesson you learned quickly in the agency.

Lee's gun was pointed straight at the boy's head. "Time to come back home, Doctor Song." Lee's gun was shaking. "Tricky, disguising yourself as a bespeckled little boy. But you can't fool me."

The little boy said nothing. Just looked into the barrel of Agent Lee's gun.

"You mean River Song?" Canton said without thinking. Thinking probably would have been good at that moment.

Agent Lee turned slowly, and pointed his gun at Canton. In the corner of his eye, Canton saw the small boy fall back, painting in relief, but mostly he looked at Agent Lee's gun. He wished he wasn't sweating so much. It was hard to look cool under pressure if you were soaked with sweat.

"What do you know about Doctor River Song?" Agent Lee looked at Canton as if seeing him for the first time.

\--

"How did you find me?" Melody asked, shaking the Doctor's hand. Bewildered.

"Hah. I'm the Doctor. I can find anyone." The Doctor smiled a sincere and self-indulgent smile. "Naturally, I mapped a five-dimensional graph between your sightings plus residual regenerative energy levels in the lower manhattan area over the last ten months plus pigeon population levels -- don't know why that became valuable data -- in Washington Square park. With some partially sentient chalk." He paused, as if daring Melody to ask how chalk could be "sentient".

Melody didn't know the word so she just forced a smile and gave him a look that told him to continue. The Doctor did so happily, quite pleased.

"Then I plugged it into an improvised computer I fashioned out of the same chalk…" He trailed off, smile fading.

"I didn't understand that," Melody said, wondering when the handshake was going to end. Then, "You did that all in fifteen minutes?"

"Ah, well." The Doctor broke the handshake and pointed towards the park off to the North. "Technically, I'm still there. The whole process took about four hours. Got some funny looks, but most of the crowds began to thin -- well, run -- after the chalk numbers started working out the math by themselves. They got the gist of what I was doing and took it from there." The Doctor gave a little chuckle, seemingly to himself. "They also started to glow once the sun set. But what's the point of sentient chalk if it isn't also glow-in-the-dark?"

"Wait." Melody was beginning to come out of the shock of a strange man being on the roof next to her, giving way to general confusion. But she could already feel that confusion giving way to a greater curiosity. "If it took ten hours how are you here… now?" Melody had the strangest feeling that this point should have bothered her much more than it actually did. The Doctor's smile faded.

"Because sentient chalk… well, not so good at math as it turns out." The Doctor shrugged. "Complete nonsense, I'm afraid. So I just asked her to find you." The Doctor pointed his thumb behind him.

Melody squinted. There was a blue box with doors and a light on the top and a sign that said "Police Box". How had she not noticed that?

"Melody, meet the Tardis. I didn't even have to ask that nicely, in the end. She does like making me run through my other options first." The Doctor stood up, leaned down, and whispered, "Don't let on, but I think she likes you."

Melody could feel something radiating off of the blue box -- Tardis -- in the back of her head. It was a strange feeling, not something she could quite put into words, even to herself. Almost how she felt after she died, which, she realized, may have had something to do with the fact that she had just died.

Almost as if it was brought on by the memory, a small burp of golden light leaked from Melody's mouth. Her heart jumped, but the Doctor pretended not to notice. Badly, but politely.

Melody didn't know what to make of a grown man who wore bow ties, appeared on secluded rooftops, surprised crying young girls, and fed them nonsense tales. Men who weren't phased by glowing energies.

It occurred to Melody that she shouldn't trust this strange man. She had come not to trust anyone on the streets.

That was a lie.

She hadn't trusted anyone for as long as she could remember, what little she could remember. Suddenly, a flash of the white room came into Melody's head. She shuddered and pushed it down. She looked back up at the Doctor, who was still pretending not to be keenly observing her. No, there was no reason that anyone, especially Melody, should rightly trust this man, dropped out of the blue.

But Melody found that she did trust the Doctor. That frightened her. More than any blue box or surprise visit or dream ever could.

"As for the timing," the Doctor continued, "I'm not quite sure. The old girl has her reasons. I suppose it is quite important that I find you now rather than four hours from now. Which points to us having an adventurous four hours…" The Doctor trailed off. He stopped, then smiled, then tried to fight the smile back and look casual.

It was a laughably transparent effort.

Melody was becoming more and more aware of how much trusting this man frightened her. Was he doing something to her?

"That is, unless you want to go and meet your mom and dad instead."

Everything in Melody's head stopped.

\--

"Curly hair?" Canton tried.

BANG

A small area of brick exploded into dust and fragments a foot from Canton's head.

"Shit," he said, dropping his revolver as a few of the more jagged shards of brick hit him a half-inch from his temple. He fell to one knee.

"Try again," Agent Lee said. Calmly.

Canton was in a hard place. A part of him, way in the back of his head, the part that wasn't panicking, sighed. He was getting supremely weary of being a supporting character in other people's drama. Somewhere behind Lee, the little boy began to sob silently.

"Professor of Archaeology speaks with an accent carries her own laser gun I once chased her off a roof and then picked her up from the same fall a week later runs with the Doctor," Canton said, all in one breath. Agent Lee smiled and lowered his gun.

"She's going to be a professor one day?" Lee said, perking up. He walked over and helped Canton up. His hand was clammy. "That is exciting."

Canton was about to reach down for his revolver, but Lee's foot beat him to it. Lee paused for a moment, considered Canton, then gleefully kicked the gun from the rooftop in an exaggerated motion.

"Am I to take it the real Agent Lee met with an unfortunate accident?" Canton took a shot in the dark. Lee turned back to Canton, unfazed.

"Oh, nothing so macabre ," he replied. "Torchwood is an embarrassingly easy organization to infiltrate as long as you mention just how much you hate that pesky Doctor no one is supposed to know about in your interview." He smiled, pleased with himself. "No, I merely inserted myself into 1967 -- corridor tech is a bit dodgy, it turns out -- with some obviously forged credentials, applied for the job, and just lived up to the important dates for the mission. Not hard to do. Well, surviving that is. Boring couple of years. Don't know how you stand it."

"Not well," Canton said. Telling himself that Lee was nuts, but knowing better than to discount his story just because of that little fact. The boy was still crying, hugging his legs.

"Well, that's to be --" Lee started, then turned to the boy, suddenly furious, "Would you shut up?!" The boy cried louder.

"Why do you want to know about River Song?" Canton asked, quickly. Lee turned back, his anger disappearing as quickly as it arose.

"Oh, no," Lee put his gun back in its holster, "You're not the one with the gun, Canton." He started kicking around the remains of what seemed to be aluminum siding.

"My fault though, I suppose. Over-explaining again. You're going to need to forgive me for that." He frowned at a particular piece of siding. Picked it up. Smelled it. Licked it. Smiled.

"You're going to need to forgive me for rather a lot, I'm afraid."

\--

"I don't have parents," Melody said like a hard fact.

The Doctor watched her face. It was cold, hardened in a moment. The Doctor had seen men and women, centuries old, with looks that hard, but never on a child. Oh, River, he thought. What did they do to you?

"Everyone has parents." The Doctor smiled, trying to reassure. He couldn't make the smile reach his eyes, but he had a feeling it wouldn't have worked. "Even I have parents. Well, not so much anymore. But yours are alive and well."

Melody's stare hardened.

"Well, fine. Not alive or well. Not born yet, to be exact." The Doctor watched as Melody's mind began to chew that over. "You have grandparents alive and well, though. A whole four of them in this version of reality." Melody's face softened, just a bit. The timey-wimey stuff was working better than personal reassurances and smiles. That was interesting.

"What's my name?" Melody asked. Still cold, still hard, but with a light in her eyes that the Doctor recognized immediately.

It was the same look River got when she was being clever. It was also quite similar to the look Amy had had when she asked to come with him back at fish custard. The look of wonder she still got when seeing something new and alien, as if suddenly reveling in the vastness of possibilities the universe provided. He had never thought to look for similarities before but they were there in front of him. Even if the eyes and hair and bone structure were all wrong.

Some things ran deeper than that.

"Melody Pond," the Doctor said, not hesitating a second. He was winning her over. He could feel it. "Your mom is Amy Pond. Your dad is Rory Pond. Rory the Roman."

"My dad is a Roman?" The Doctor could almost feel the cogs of her mind at work. "My mom is from the future but my dad is from the past?" He decided to give it a push and she what she did with it.

"Well, your mom is from the future and your dad is from the future too. He's a nurse in the future. A Roman in the past. But not anymore except when he is." The Doctor stopped and watched. The hardness was gone. Just a smile and sharp, bright eyes. She was beginning to glow a bit around the edges. That was new. "You're from the future too."

"My dad was from the past in another version of reality. You said something about 'this version of reality'. I'm from this version of reality and my mother is from the future and my father was a nurse." She was pleased with herself. The Doctor had never seen a child take to the concept of time travel -- let alone alternate realities -- so naturally since the fall of Galifrey. Then Melody's expression grew dark, her glowing ceased.

She had let her guard down for just a moment, but Melody was self-aware again. The Doctor could see it in the way she held herself, like a weight has lowered itself back onto her. Her shoulders tensed and her stance was wearier. Her wonder was replaced with a colder intellect.

"Are you from the future too? From another version of reality?" Melody asked, frowning.

"Nothing so mundane," the Doctor replied. It was true. Let her work that out. "But maybe you can find out one day."

The Doctor snapped his fingers and the Tardis doors opened inwards, casting a warm light out onto the darkening rooftop. In the distance, someone screamed as glowing chalk numbers came alive.

"Can I tell Simon I'm going, first?" Melody asked.

"Who is Simon, and yes, if you're fast." The Doctor was reluctant to let Melody get away again but he couldn't take her against her will. "We can take the Tar--"

"Thanks!" Melody yelled, her relit glow shown as warmly and brightly as the Tardis interior, "Be right back!"

Before the Doctor could react, Melody jumped impossibly high into the air, onto the Tardis, off of the Tardis, then sprinted to the edge of the roof, bounded to the next rooftop and off into the distance.

"Ah," said the Doctor, suddenly alone. He was stunned, but never speechless. "That is very not good."


	6. Interlude: Killing

Depending on whom you asked, Alfalfa-Matraxis was in the middle of a golden age that would last one billion years. However, Rigelax thought to himself, in the private confines of his primary mind, people who answered differently usually wound up gone.

Rigelax shuttered to himself as he scaled the palace wall, the one which looked out upon the cliff-face which itself overlooked the red ocean. The one that was unscalable through traditional means. But the church had long arms, even in these dark times. He had been told that the climbing gauntlets which had been remolded to fit his smaller hands, were very old, Centauran, and absolutely irreplaceable.

Unlike him.

If Rigelax was discovered, it would be his holy duty to throw himself down onto the jagged rocks below, where another cleric would retrieve the gauntlets from his corpse. His secondary head grimaced at the thought, a minor heresy.

Surprisingly, becoming a holy assassin, a martyr to the cause if need be, had slackened some of Rigelax's piety. Oh, he still abided the twelve guiding principles of Solosian theology. He didn't spit or steal or urinate in public places. He was nice to his mother, when he saw her, and even his brother Teliax, who still lived at home. But, curse it, if, in a moment of distress, an emotional response slipped onto the face of his secondary head… Well, he wasn't going to beat himself up about it - literally - anymore. Minor indiscretions were negligible in the face of the service he was about to render unto Solos, unto all of Alfalfa-Matraxis.

He was going to kill the Half-King.

Rigelax had been born into the reign of the Half-King, who had arrived on this world in fire five cycles previously. No one talked much about the before-times. Even the elders of the church had been vague when expounding the glories of Alfalfa-Matraxi before the Half-King's rise. But Rigelax had faith. It had to be better than this, than the fear he had always felt, always accepted as a mere fact of life.

He wanted something better for his mother. She was such a sad, lonely woman. Lonely in a way that her two sons had never been able to fix. Some people were just broken on all-sides like that, the neighbors said, clicking their tongues when they thought Rigelax couldn't hear.

Once, after crying all night out of her secondary face, an act which had scandalized Rigelax enough to send Teliax, only four at the time, to a neighbor's house for the night, his mother had let slip that Rigelax's father had spoken out against the Half-King. Had disappeared. First, underground, communicating through letters to his wife and to children he had barely even seen. Then, abosolutely. His letters stopped and everyone pretended to forget about the dark haired man who had once befriended their families and watched their children when they had had to put extra shifts in out on the fields.

The entire story had come out of Rigelax's mother's secondary head. The memory burned into Rigelax's mind. Even now, every detail of his mother's heresy, the worst any Soloist could commit, was etched into the back of his minds, both primary and, as much as it pained him to admit, secondary.

It also meant that the story was true. Every word. Even the smallest child knew that to lie through the secondary mouth was impossible.

Somewhere amongst the pain of memory and the cold night air, Rigelax found strength. He would end this. He believed.

Climbing into the window - the Half-King had apparently insisted on an ocean view as one of his first royal decrees - Rigelax hummed counter vibrations to cancel out even the smallest sounds of his stealthy arrival. It was late, but there was still a candle lit off in one corner of the opulent bedchamber. The blue flame shone a faint, flickering light that revealed jade stone walls.

Stepping with perfect, hummed silence, a feat which it had taken him three years to master, Rigelax crept to the edge of the four poster bed where the Half-King slept. An entirely new set of verses were required to cancel out the feint swishing of the curtains as Rigelax pulled them aside and laid his eyes on the sleeping form of the Half-King.

A ripple of shock went through Rigelax that made the eyes on his secondary head go wide and almost caused him to stop humming with his primary mouth. No one in his level society had ever actually seen the Half-King. But his name was true. The sleeping form which lay, muttering and turning restlessly, below Rigelax, had but one head. One face. But was it primary or secondary? Rigelax would never find out.

Rigelax didn't hesitate. Finding a steely calm within he had not known before, Rigelax took his dagger in his left, gauntleted hand and plunged it deep into the heart of the sleeping Half-King.

The Half-King died instantly, blood welling from the wound, but not spurting. His heart beat no more.

A moment passed and Rigelax still stood before the corpse of his monarch. Taking in the numbing weight of regicide, Rigelax marveled that he had actually completed his task. He had! He would be a hero to his people, first amongst a new line of saints, his moth-

The Half-King erupted at his extremities in a golden light which blinded both of Rigelax's faces and sent him flying into the far jade wall.

Rigelax tried to cry out, but the wind had been knocked from his lung and he merely sat, stunned, gasping for air.

"Shit!" A voice cried from the Half-King's bed. "Shit! What just happened?"

Rigelax started to cough. Slowly, the Half-King rose from the bed where he had been murdered. As he walked towards Rigelax, something small and cylindrical in his hand, glowing golden, Rigelax realized that he could not raise his hands from where they lay sprawled beside him.

"Don't bother," the Half-King said, a croak at first. Then a cough. "I've magnetized the floor. Never execute a hostile overthrow of an alien world without keeping iron floors in your bedchamber. That's rule number … well, it's rule seventy-nine, to be honest, but it's a good one nonetheless." He coughed again. "What is in my lung?"

Rigelax gestured with the eyes of his secondary head to the large knife protruding from the chest of the Half-King. He was too scared, dismayed, and bewildered to keep his secondary head from reflexively revealing the truth. His years of training had evaporated from him.

"Ah," croaked the Half-King and matter-of-factly pulled the dagger out of his chest. It fell faster than it should have and hit the floor with a loud clang. The Half-King's glow began to fade and no new blood streamed down his previously bloodied pajama shirt.

"Much better," he said, his voice so clear it cut through the room like a blade. "Now let's have a look at you," the Half-King started again, his eyes cold and bright.

Had his hair always been black? a small piece of Rigelax's terrified mind, primary or secondary he didn't care, wondered. Rigelax could have sworn it had been blond when he had killed the monarch.

The Half-King looked deeply into the eyes of Rigelax's secondary face and all thoughts vanished.

"Rigelax-Matraxis," The Half-King said to no one, certainly not Rigelax. "And you're," he ran a scalding hot finger across Rigelax's forehead and placed it in his mouth, "Seventeen? Really?" It registered to Rigelax that The Half-King was annoyed by his age, but he was too stunned to attach that thought to anything.

The Half-King walked away from Rigelax and began pacing in circles on the cold, iron floor.

"They're sending children against me now?" The Half-King shouted to no one in particular, "Children with," he looked over more closely, "knock-off, Centuran garbage? Can't pull off an industrial revolution without plunging into revolt after five tries but they can get gravity gauntlets to scale my palace walls? Ugh, fine." The Half-King looked over at Rigelax with a hard gaze completely opposed to the fury that had until now taken him.

"Just don't talk," the Half-King said, staring at Rigelax, "I'm concentrating."

Rigelax began to feel strange. Suddenly, the room wasn't walled in by jade, but by grey marble. Rigelax started, forgetting his terror and the order of the Half-King.

"What did you do?" Rigelax asked, breathless. The Half-King looked around.

"Oh, the walls. Well, nothing. Not directly. Temporal shift. That happens when I play with the timeline." he looked around again. "Mind you, a whole room? It's getting worse. That'll happen."

"You've done what?" Rigelax asked again.

"Well, nothing yet. It's what I've resolved to do." The Half-King smiled, almost sweetly, "Tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up early, or sleep in maybe, have a nice breakfast, a good, strong cup of tea, and then I'm going to kill your mother before you were born."

The Half-King let that hang in the air for a moment before continuing.

"Now, normally I would just kill you, seeing as you're the one who tried to murder me. Seems only fair. But the Soloists had to send someone who wasn't around to murder twenty-two years ago and, seeing as all I have to play around with on this miserable, backwards planet is Dalek Time Corridor technology, my hands are tied. Your mother was around twenty two years ago, you weren't." He shrugged. "I hope you don't have any siblings. Well, honestly, I don't care." The Half-King grinned.

"But you haven't done it yet." Rigelax was panicking. His mother. Teliax. Oh Solos, he could feel himself… fading.

"Yes, you're right. By all logic, that shouldn't work. Doesn't make sense," The Half-King stroked Rigelax's secondary head soothingly, "In a sane, rational time-space continuum, you can't just go resolving to kill someone's mother later and they vanish before your eyes - you're beginning to fade by the by - it just doesn't work like that," The Half-King seemed very sympathetic. Then something hardened in him and he drew his had away.

"But we're not living in a sane, rational time-space continuum anymore," the anger on the Half-King's face - was it primary or secondary, Rigelax's thoughts echoed - boiled over into his speech, "Someone had to go kill the Time Lords. All of them. Well, not just that, destroy Gallifrey itself. All in one go. And with that, the rules have changed and oh yes I can kill you by resolving to do so. I could do a lot of things if I had the means to move about unencumbered."

"Honestly, I could just kiss the bastard," the Half-King looked up, "well, after I kill him, perhaps."

"But that's -" without warning, Rigelax's lung vanished into oblivion. He gagged.

"Barbaric," the Half-King sighed, wistful, "But what can one do? Gallifrey falls." He turned and walked away.

One last breathless gasp and Rigelax-Matraxis wasn't there anymore. He had never been there. He had never been born.

For a long time, the bedchamber was silent.

"One billion years of prosperity?" the Master mused to himself, alone once more, his wine had moved to another room in the temporal shift. Bother. "That was an overstatement. At the current rate, I'll burn through this world in five."

There was a supreme arrogance in that statement, but at the edges, a creeping fear of its verity.

"My dear Doctor," he said to himself, softer this time, "you'd best hurry up and find me."


	7. Shooting

Melody ran, bounded, and ran again, awash with new feelings. Was it true? Were her parents alive somewhere in time?

It seemed the height of foolishness, a thought she had stopped herself from even considering a long, long time ago. And yet. She shook it out of her head as she neared Simon's spot. If it was true, she would be happy, if not, she wouldn't be surprised. Melody would not let herself get invested. Not yet. No matter what this mad Doctor had to say.

Stay aware. Stay strong. Never hesitate. Never hope when you can assure. That is how you move in for the kill, a voice reassured her in the back of her head. But it wasn't Melody's voice. It was a voice from a long time ago. From the white room. She shuddered and pushed it back.

But still. Amy Pond. Why was that name familiar?

It was dark when she touched down to the rooftop where Simon's fort had once stood. She grimaced to herself. She wouldn't have time to build him a new one. Walking towards the wreckage, she saw the semi-charred remains of the pigeon she had been eating earlier. She picked it up, sniffed it, shrugged, and let it dangle from her left hand as she looked for Simon. She would want a snack later, when the glowing wore off.

Simon did not seem to be home.

She looked around at the wreckage, the charred remains of comics and, she realized, a note. It was on a napkin. Simon didn't have napkins. It was uncharred too, a lone white pigeon amongst a dark flock. Melody's stomach growled.

Melody picked up the napkin. It was dark but Melody was still glowing. That's odd, she thought to herself. This usually doesn't last so long after I die. Nevertheless, Melody could read the note by the glow of her right hand.

Dear Doctor Song,

It is I, Agent Lee. I have your friend, the small boy. Come at once to the place where I am keeping him.

Best,

Agent Lee

PS.

Behind you.

Melody looked behind her. There were two men. And Simon, hands tied, quietly sobbing through a gag. The tall one was holding a lunch box in one hand and a gun in the other. The shorter man looked reluctant. And familiar.

"Sorry about that, Doctor Song," The tall man began, smiling eagerly, "I was going to do the whole hostage thing. You know. I take your friend. Go to some warehouse. Have a stakeout. Lure you in. Murder you in a strategically sound environment. The high-ground." He waved his gun to mime 'etcetera etcetera'.

"But you know what? I'm new in town. New to the whole century to be exact. Sent here to get you back home," He frowned at that, "But I think you and I both know that that was never an option. Not after what you did. Well, what you'll do."

He paused, then took off his glasses. His eyes were red and glowed in the night.

"What you're never going to get the chance to do," the man - Agent Lee, Melody's brain shouted distantly, through the shock - finished.

Melody said nothing. Suddenly, Agent Lee made a move. Melody jumped away, but it was not his gun the man went for. It was the lunchbox. It came on with a whhhhhr and a ping.

The pigeon in Melody's left hand exploded.

"Gah!" Melody yelped as the concussive force burned her left side and threw her into the ground.

She skidded over the edge of the rooftop. For a moment, she panicked, but she caught the edge of the roof with her right hand. Her stomach reeled in pain and vertigo as she looked down to the street far, far below.

Melody tried, at first, to grab on with her left hand, but the sight of what remained of it almost caused her to let go. She closed her eyes and fought back the pain now erupting all along her left side.

Pigeons, she thought, bleakly. And then, Stay Strong. She didn't push back the voice this time.

"See? No escape. No half measures. No Doctor Song," Agent Lee's voice and face were cold. His eyes shone in the dark. He turned to his companion, "Didn't I tell you this thing did some spectacular things to birds? What luck, right?"

Melody looked up. Agent Lee was standing over her, gun in hand. Beside him sat the lunchbox of death. Pinging.

"My name isn't Doctor Song," Melody said, fighting back the pain, getting angry, trying to tap into the edge that had let her survive on her own for so long. It was hard. Her left ear was ringing and the pain from her ruined hand was blinding. But she fought it and gave a good effort towards looking intimidating.

"I know," she heard Agent Lee say through the ringing, "and now it never will be. Everybody wins."

"Except me," Melody growled through gritted teeth.

"Especially you," Agent Lee cocked his firearm, "If you knew what you were going to be become, Doctor Song, you'd thank me. You'd beg me to end it all right here right -"

Another gun cocked.

"Did you really think I only had one gun?" a voice said in the darkness. Melody couldn't see but assumed it was the other man. Where did she know him from?

"Well, what with the economy…" Agent Lee began, turning slowly away from Melody.  
\--

Canton was amazed that Agent Lee had turned his back on him.

Finally.

The whole hour waiting had been nothing but line-of-sight observation of Canton coupled with knowing looks, bizarre anecdotes, and manic smiles of anticipation from Lee. No moment to grab the gun out of his ankle holster.

So he waited and waded through the swamp of weirdness that was Agent Lee.

Did Canton know any good warehouses in the vicinity? Did he himself own a warehouse? Where might one buy a warehouse and could they do so after seven on a Sunday?

Had Canton heard the good news? The twelve guiding principles of the neo-reformed, fundamentalist Anglican Host?

Was Canton aware that there was a spray in the future that would clear that male-pattern baldness right up? The homosexuality too, if he was so inclined. If not, that was fine. Did he know there was also a spray with the desired effect of gaining homosexuality? Lee had been to a party once where -

Finally, the girl had arrived. And Canton told himself that, after listening to Lee talk crazy, half-incinerate a thirteen year old girl, and express a desire to put a bullet into her skull, he would have no problem shooting this man in the back of the head.

No warning. Just end it.

But, as it turned out, Canton still wasn't that kind of man.

So here they were.

"Hey," Lee began, "no hard feelings. I didn't mean to hog her. Do you want a go?"

Canton didn't dignify this with a response. Just continued to point his gun at Agent Lee's forehead and tried his very best to avoid looking into his creepy red eyes. Unsuccessfully.

"Hah," Lee chuckled, "fine. Tell you what. I'll kill the girl. The time/space continuum will have a complete and utter meltdown, like really, a veritable tantrum. Probably a crack in the fabric of the universe will open up. I'll use that to charge my time corridor and we'll abscond to," Lee paused and looked at Canton with a face Canton could only guess was an attempt at 'smoldering', "some-time more... intimate." There was a pause as Lee continued his smolder face.

"Gee," Canton said, finally, "I didn't take you for a queer." It turned out Canton still had some hard feelings there.

"I'm a 52nd Century man, Canton," Lee winked. Canton didn't.

"I'm not."

Canton shot Lee in the throat.  
\--

"I know I just asked," the Doctor was frantic, exasperated, "But-"

The wheezing of the Tardis cut him off. It sounded… hurried? That was unusual.

Then again, it was bound to be a short trip. Just a few rooftops. Hardly the proper use of the Tardis. Next he'd be using the old girl to pick up milk and then… well, he'd done that. Well, lot's of times to be sure. Wasn't he out of milk? And tea for that matter? Maybe a quick trip for - no - Melody. That seemed to be important.

Time was not the boss of the Doctor - naturally - but he couldn't let Melody/River slip out of his fingers again. Or into anyone else's. Again.

The wheezing stopped.

"You're amazing, Sexy," the Doctor called as he rushed out of the door into chaos.


	8. Burning

"Canton!" the Doctor yelled, stepping out his blue box and back into Canton's life. His arms were outstretched and, for all appearances, he was thrilled, "I was hoping I would run into you." He looked towards the source of the incessant pinging.

"Oh, look, you've found my Timey-Wimey Detector!" The Doctor was excited and then puzzled. "What were you doing in London?" Canton opened his mouth.

"Ah, never mind. Time for that later — oh, you appear to have shot someone — we need to find Melody. She's run off. Glowing and — what do you have in your jacket?" The Doctor's smile faded in an instant as if he already knew. The Doctor's face turned into something hard and distant as he saw the mess that was Melody Pond, burned and bleeding all down her left side, most of what had been short, brown hair burned away. Despite appearances, she was alive.

"Pigeon," croaked Melody, "The lunchbox."

"My Timey-Wimey detector," the Doctor said, to no one present. "Of course, leave it to humanity to weaponize street birds." He looked at Canton severely.

"Did you have a part in this? Don't lie. I'll know," Canton had seen the Doctor sit, chained to a chair, for three months. To trick an unseen enemy.

This was the face of a man who would do something like that.

"Quite a large part," Canton didn't lie. He felt like throwing up, "I'm part of an agency called Torchwood now. They sent me and the corpse out to find an alien who looked like a girl. Eating people they said-"

"But he wasn't who he said he was," The Doctor preempted Canton with what his exact words were going to be. "No, I'm not surprised," The Doctor sniffed towards Agent Lee's body, "Complicated Space-Time Event. Not that complicated, only a little more than you, but more than you would expect to find here. Is that Dalek Corridor technology stinking off him?"

"I don't know what a 'Dalek' is, but he mentioned some kind of corridor, yes," Canton confirmed, distantly. "Said he was from the 52ndCentury. Anglican. Name was Lee. I don't know if that's his first or his last name. Familiar?"

"Never seen him before in my lives," The Doctor contemplated the body. Then disregarded it and turned back to Melody.

"Melody?" The Doctor said. Canton felt the girl turn in his arms to face The Doctor. She didn't say anything.

"Melody, you're going to be alright. Lee hurt you, but he didn't kill you. You're going to be alright. Do you hear me?"

"He said he wanted to kill me so I didn't do horrible things," Melody said, finally, her voice was raspy and she was wheezing wetly. Canton had heard the noise before and knew it meant she was bleeding into her lungs.

"Well, then he's a fool. You can't undo time with a gun or an exploding pigeon," the Doctor whispered. Canton noticed that the Doctor hadn't denied the possibility of this little girl doing horrible things. He just hoped that Melody hadn't noticed. He turned to the weeping boy but noticed he had run away. Poor kid, he thought to himself, wrapped up in other people's stories. Canton empathized. Then he remembered something.

"This is Amy's dau-" Canton began.

"I'm not dead, you know," A voice interrupted from the vicinity of Agent Lee's corpse. Then one with the bullet through it's neck. Canton looked over, slower he guessed, than one usually turned to watch the body of the man he had just killed get up and brush itself off, but then it had been that kind of day.

"Kevlar reinforced larynx," Lee pulled a bullet out of his throat, frowned at it, and then tossed it aside. "Standard issue bionics. Sloppy work, Canton. I thought for a second you'd go for the kill."

"I was trying to shut you up," Canton was still holding Melody, but now he did it with a protective instinct that replaced his earlier guilt.

"Don't like a talker, Canton?" The Doctor said, nonchalantly, and he picked himself up and strolled towards the not-dead Agent Lee, "I'll keep that in mind."

"Do I know you?" Agent Lee looked up from the bundled Melody in Canton's arm and at the approaching Doctor. A spark of realization came to Lee's glowing, red eyes, he smiled, "You."

"Me," The Doctor stood a few feet from Lee.

"You should be helping me," Lee said, matter-of-factly.

"Perhaps you should tell me exactly what your intentions are," The Doctor started, "Kill and innocent girl? Stop something nasty from your past? You know you can't. That's not how causality works, even in non-fixed events."

"Causality isn't the name of the game anymore, Doctor." Lee smiled and a gun appeared suddenly in his left hand, "Haven't you heard? Gallifrey falls."

"No," shouted Canton, seeing the gun, cursing himself in the microsecond before he reacted for not searching Lee's then-corpse. He reached for his own firearm.

But Melody was faster.

—

Melody ignored the debilitating pain of her left side and went blank. Time almost stopped for her as she burst out of Canton's arms and raced towards Lee. Passing the Doctor, she bull-rushed Lee and slammed her ruined left hand into his face. Hard. She felt twisted bones crack against something that was much harder than a human head had any right being. She wondered absently, breaking from the clarity of the moment, just how she would know that.

She was sitting on top of Lee's chest, slamming her continually breaking left hand into Agent Lee's face. Stay in the moment, a voice in the back of her head repeated coldly. Never relent. She didn't.

"Don't. Hurt. My. Friends!" She screamed as new blood began to well out of her broken hand. Lee's face was distorting, the red of his eyes glowing brighter. His right hand grabbed the back of her shirt and flung her, forcefully, into the Tardis. She lay there for a moment. Stunned. She barely registered the Doctor standing pensively to the side. Observing.

"Killed my brother!" Lee snarled as he got up, gun still in hand.

"Killed my daughter!" Lee grimaced as he sprinted to where Melody lay. His gun was aimed straight at her chest. Point blank. An un-asked for series of feints, counters, attacks, and locks ran through Melody's weary head. None of them could prevent what was about to happen next.

"Killed my world!" Lee yelled, and shot Melody in the chest.

A moment of silence, broken by Canton's cries and shots at Agent Lee, and Melody died.

She got up. Burning bright. Pushing her rage and pain into the fires erupting from her head and arms. At the center of the inferno was Melody; she smiled at the awestruck Lee, who dropped his gun and fell to his knees. He was bleeding from the side, where Canton's shots had hit, but he didn't seem to notice.

"You're a Ti -" Lee began.

"I'm a super hero," Melody finished for him, grabbing him by the chest and holding him close as she burned brighter than she ever had before. She poured herself, everything she had, the loneliness, the pain, the fear, the rage, into her death.

And Agent Lee's.

And then it was over.


	9. Living

"Not," the Doctor began, after a considerable silence but before the dust had cleared, "the way I would have handled it." He looked down at Canton, but Canton was busy being awestruck. Humans tended to waste a lot of time on that, the Doctor thought to himself. But Canton was a good sort. A little trigger happy, but really, if the Doctor routinely turned down companions based on that tendency he would have missed out on at least half of the good ones.

"She's," Canton began. He appeared to have trouble finding the words.

"Going to be fine," the Doctor finished for him, "Better than fine in fact. She's going to be -"

"I'm colored!" a voice shouted from the cloud of dust where Melody and Agent Lee had been standing.

"Well, we'll work on her racial vernacular," the Doctor turned to Canton, a bit embarrassed, "raised in the 1960s, Florida, not by a particularly nice sort at that. Not her fault. But otherwise completely fine."

Melody stepped out of the dust. Alone. She was smiling down at her hands.

"I quite like this," Melody said, walking up to the Doctor and Canton, "it's interesting. Much preferable to boy-hair."

"Yes, well the two aren't mutually exclusive," the Doctor said as he crouched down and examined Melody closely. Without allowing argument, he pulled at her ears, checked under her eyelids, made her open her mouth, stick out her tongue and say 'aahhhh'. Then he sat cross legged and looked pensively at Melody.

"I die sometimes," Melody said, a sounding a little embarrassed, "but I always come back. Different. It's because I broke the suit."

"No," the Doctor said, "it's because you're a Time Lord. The first new one in a very long while." A spark of recognition came into Melody's face at that. Suddenly her smile was gone. She punched the Doctor in the shoulder, causing him to roll backwards from his sitting position onto his back. Melody sat on his stomach and kept hitting him.

"Take it back!" she yelled, suddenly frantic, "I am not a Time Lord! I would never-"

"Never what?" the Doctor was unfazed by the girl using him as a chair and punching bag, "What did they tell you?"

"I," Melody started and then stopped, unsure, "I don't know." She got off the Doctor and sat beside him, hugging her knees to her chest. "Are my parents Time Lords?"

The Doctor didn't respond at first. What was he going to do about Amy and Rory? Hand them their Time Lord daughter, thirteen, a trained killer — he'd recognized the traces of Venusian Aikaido in the way she'd rushed toward Lee — regenerating twice in a day without warning, displaying physical abilities far beyond the limits of peak human — or Time Lord — condition?

How would that conversation go? Here's your daughter; strange powers, mental scars, and all. Sorry I couldn't get her in baby-form. Think of all the pounds you'll save on diapers.

"It's more complicated than that, I'm afraid," the Doctor said at last, "But, really, when is it not?"

Canton had been quiet through this whole exchange but he seemed to be coming round. He got up and walked over to where Melody had regenerated, still shrouded in a clouds of dust. He made a gagging noise at whatever it was he found there and came back out more quickly than he had entered.

"Lee's dead," Canton said.

"Good," Melody sniffed. Ah, River, the Doctor thought to himself. There you are.

"Not good," the Doctor corrected, annoyed, "never 'good'." Melody fixed him a hard stare. The Doctor rolled his eyes.

"Convenient, perhaps," he relented.

"So this is Amy and Rory's daughter?" Canton tried, as if broaching an uncomfortable subject.

"Yes," the Doctor said, and then, not wanting Canton to keep thinking out loud, "who you've never met." Canton frowned as if he was going to argue. Then took a deep breath and shrugged. They'd talk later.

"Does he know my mom and dad too?" Melody asked, brightening suddenly.

"I met them once", Canton sat down beside Melody and the Doctor. Then laid on his back and looked up at the considerable lack of stars in the light-polluted sky. "Good people. Far as I could tell, at any rate. Mind you, less exploding."

"Dying," Melody corrected him, herself laying down.

"Regenerating," the Doctor corrected both of them, remaining sitting up. Melody turned to him, interested. It must have been the first time she'd heard the word for her condition.

"And it's not dying," the Doctor went on, "quite the opposite, in fact, it's living. Living and burning bright. For as long as you can." There was quiet as Melody took this in and Canton pretended not to listen.

"I suppose I could try that," Melody said finally. Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

-Epilogue-

The Doctor was alone at the Tardis console as they entered the time-stream, bound for Leadworth. Amy's time. Melody's new home.

Canton had picked up the sleeping Melody, brought her into the Tardis, and put her to bed. The Doctor had told Canton to pick a room for Melody and one for himself. And to rest up for what was ahead of them. There would be more days like today to come.

Maybe trigger-happy wasn't the worst trait in light of what may be coming. Soon Rory would be there to help, full weight of a thousand years of patience come to bare. He smiled and wondered if he actually had to worry. Amy's earth-shattering stubbornness would be more than enough to keep Melody safe. He chuckled at the pretty thought.

But that wasn't true, was it? Amy, Rory, the Doctor; none of them had been able to protect Melody. They had all failed her. And Melody had been one to pay the price. The Doctor put his head down, barely bothering to caress the dials and switches of the Tardis. There was a flash of light.

"Hello, sweetie," said a voice from behind the Doctor. He didn't have to turn to know who it belonged to.

"River," the Doctor replied, distant, not bothering to tell her that it was impossible to materialize into the Tardis via a Vortex Manipulator.

"This is the day you found me," River said. Sounding nostalgic and just a bit sad. "I don't think I ever felt safer than I did tonight, sleeping in the Tardis."

"For that," the Doctor turned, "I'm so very, very sorry." River smiled sadly, then closed the distance between them.

"Do you ever forgive me?" the Doctor asked, quietly, "when you find out why you grew up how you did. How it was because of my failure to protect you."

"Oh, Doctor," River smiled, "you'll do so much more than protect me in the days to come. How could I not?" She paused, "You won't be able to protect me from myself. There's one for free."

"And it all turns out alright?" the Doctor asked, looking at a woman who he had seen die before his eyes twice now. As if she was a puzzle through which he could solve everything. It did him no good.

"Spoilers," River said, and kissed him. Lightly. She pulled back.

"What was that for?" the Doctor, asked. Cheering up, swinging a bit at the hip. River's eyes didn't smile back.

"For forgiving me," River said. She touched her wrist and, without another word, she was gone. The world around the Doctor snapped back into chaotic focus. Bells rang. Buzzers buzzed. The automated singer sang a song of warning. Something was wrong.

The Tardis quaked.

The Doctor yelped and turned to a red light, flashing panickedly and far, far too late.

The Tardis shattered.


	10. Interlude: Explaining

Amy didn't put down the gun.

"What do you mean, you're my daughter?" She felt like she should have been shocked, should break down, should feel … something. But she didn't. She was through being emotional. She was through being used.

Amy wanted answers.

Rory made a noise behind her. She looked over to her husband but his support and Roman dress did nothing for her mood. "Our daughter," she corrected herself, reluctantly.

"I mean what I said, Amy," River said. Calmly despite the - whatever it was - laser gun, in her face. "I'm Melody." Rory put a hand on Amy's shoulder from behind, but it didn't help. She was well and fully cross.

"We met!" Amy wasn't about to back down without some answers. "We met on that planet! We met at the Pandorica! We met in America!"

"Yes," River replied, simply. Her calm didn't waver.

"And all of those times, you knew who I was?" Amy was getting angrier as she said it all aloud.

"Yes," said River. "I knew rather a lot." She paused and started again, "but you knew that, didn't you? You knew I was someone from the Doctor's future."

"But you didn't say you were from mine!" Amy didn't know what she was feeling. Desperation? Betrayal? But she also felt a tiny sliver of acceptance. And maybe something verging on hope. Not that she believed any of it. She tried again. "Then what happens next? After this. After the Doctor finds you."

"Spoilers," said River, still calm. It was entirely the wrong thing to say. Amy did something she thought might have been cocking the gun. It made a whirring sound and glowed warmly. Which meant it was probably working.

"Do I look like the Doctor?" Amy tried to sound menacing. It was impossible. All of it. And untrue. And Amy was not about to trust River Song. She knew the kinds of secrets River could keep, the lies she could tell. River was as complicit in the Doctor's death as any of them. Perhaps more, for all Amy knew. It was too much. Melody. The Flesh. The Doctor's death before her eyes. It had been a bad day. Possibly a bad seven months.

"Fine," River said. Placidly but with just the smallest hint of bite. "Shoot me in the face." She took a step closer. "It wouldn't be the first time." Amy didn't know what she meant until suddenly she did. Amy gasped.

"You were the little girl!" Amy put down the gun and stepped back, well and truly shaken. "In the space suit!" River's eyes confirmed it.

"You shot the little girl in the head? You shot our daughter in the head?" Rory finally broke in, too shocked to be angry.

Amy said nothing, dropped the gun, and fell to her knees. She was the worst mother. Already. She had been before she had even given birth.

"She missed," River said helpfully. Then something hit Amy, and her stomach lurched with dread and the weight of her realization. The suit. The lake.

"You killed the Doctor," Amy said. Softly. And with a cold, creeping hatred she hadn't known she possessed. There was silence. A creeping, waiting silence.

"Yes," River said at last.


	11. Waking

It was good to be king, the Master thought, and reclined into his gold-gilded throne.

Gold was not a naturally occurring element on Alfalfa-Matraxis, much to the Master's initial dismay and later frustration. A planet with no gold? No, that simply wouldn't do. Whoever heard of a silver throne? A platinum throne? A bronze throne? Check again, the Master had told his gaggle of two-headed advisers. And they had come back, two months later, having scoured even the most remote mountain village for word of this "gold." Yes, they had said. We checked several times. No gold.

The problem with putting heads on pikes on Alfalfa-Matraxis was that you needed roughly twice the usual number of pikes per political enemy or incompetent. It was a large part of the Master's eventual decision to start snuffing out inconvenient individuals as infants. Also boredom. But those had been early days. The Master had lived and learned. And acquired a wholly new and more agreeable set of advisors.

And indeed, as with any pre-galactic travel-level planet that had been around throughout the history of the universe, the isolation of Alfalfa-Matraxis wasn't an absolute statement. An assortment of trinkets here, a crashed alien ship there. A small number of barrows, far beyond ancient, housed mosaics which chronicled the glories of interstellar empires which had long since declined, had yet to rise, or had once existed but now never had.

History had never been a straight line, even during the golden reign of Gallifrey and since... well, it certainly made for interesting reports. Some of it. The parts that weren't exceedingly tedious. Relics and oddities from the future, from the never-was. The Master would need to get used to that. It was the universe in which he was living. At least for the present.

The Master supposed he was an oddity himself in that sense.

But no gold. Not for three years into the Master's reign. And then, finally, four years of state-funded archaeological expeditions later, the Master had had the brilliant idea of paying a visit to the less fashionable southern pole of Alfalfa-Matraxis, the one with the capricious magnetic tendencies. Those tendencies would have made the southern pole an especially tempting black market port to some civilization in some neighboring star system at some point over the last five billion years. The hunch had paid off. The expedition was a gold mine. Well, a paltry one.

The expedition had yielded exactly 42 ounces of pure gold.

It was something, the Master had shrugged, somewhat put off by his meager success but determined to make the best of things. Gilding had made that gold go a long, long way. Ultra-laminate prevented flaking on the almost micron-thin layer of gold which coated the Master's otherwise iron chair. The laminate gave the chair a stretchy, sticky sheen which made it look plastic-painted-gold. It also made sitting on the thing quite uncomfortable. But, the Master had convinced himself, sometimes it just came down standards and damn comfort for not synching up accordingly

The worst part, the Master reflected, was the thorough ignorance on the part of the inhabitants of Alfalfa-Matraxis concerning the importance and status of gold.

They feared him, of course. How could they not? He was the Master, overlord of Alfalfa Matraxis. Or was it emperor? He really should check. Scourge of the galaxies. Archenemy to several very important people. A name which made Daleks feel quite uncomfortable and make up excuses about why they had other places to be. To fear the Master was only natural. He was kind of rather frightening.

But while the Master's secret police were swamped with the rumors and hushed voices that wisped about the underside of things, the stories told tales of the dreaded Half-King and his high, yellow chair. It just didn't have the ring to it that the Master had envisioned when creating the "The Half-King Needs Gold" branch of government twenty years back.

The Master looked up at the high back of his throne. Rassilon, had it always been so gaudy? More ostentatious than imposing. Not even comfy.

He sighed and picked up his glass of Alfalfa-Matraxian wine. The finest on the whole planet. The liquid in the Master's glass glowed ultraviolet, indicating that it had reached the peak of its vintage. He wasn't so bad a fellow. He had brought wine to Alfalfa-Matraxis. The first ever.

The secrets of the great vineyards of Gallifrey hadn't died along with the rest of Time Lord culture. It was a small victory, but those might well have been the only victories that awaited the Master for the remainder of his never-ending life. Gallifrey falls.

"Oh well," the Master said to himself "you can't have everything". With this he took a deep sip from the glass.

As if on cue, the Master's eyes widened and his face puckered. He spat out the mouthful. The Master looked back at the glass, wondering if he had accidentally poured in a bottle of battery acid by mistake and, when the wine proved indeed to be wine, he threw it down onto the cold iron floors of his throne room.

The glass shattered. Shrilly, the Master found, but not satisfyingly.

The best wine in all of Alfalfa-Matraxis, the Master thought, scornfully. The worst part was that it was true. What a disgusting planet. The Master wished he was elsewhere. Anywhere.

In a thoroughly rotten mood, the Master shifted in his uncomfortable throne, alone in his empty, darkened throne room. The minister who oversaw the "Get the Half-King Trashed" wing of government was going to get kicked down some stairs when he was eight. That was certain. The thought brought minimal catharsis as somewhere on Alfalfa-Matraxis, a fairly important government official faded into oblivion.

The Master closed his eyes and waited for something. Death, perhaps.

She didn't come.

–

"This is very important," The Doctor said to Canton, his hands cradling Canton's head firmly. Behind him, the time and universe expanded, warped, and rushed past. The Doctor's eyes looked into Canton's eyes. They were bright and serious. "You need to -"

Canton woke.

His head was screaming. His head had been screaming every morning for some number of days.

"It would probably be smart to stay asleep through that last bit," Canton said to himself. But he never did.

Four days of cold, fog, cryptic dreams, and off-putting looks from aliens had done very little for Canton's mood. But the sleep helped. Minimally.

Canton didn't speak two-headed alien, so all he could do was sit in his bed, try to keep down whatever dreck it was that the aliens were feeding him, and try not to let on just how intense the withdrawal he was suffering felt. A whole new planet and no alcohol, Canton mused. Languishing may indeed have had some good bits to it around the edges. He hoped that this would end soon.

The room where Canton had woken four days ago was clean and white. Like a hospital. His bed was small, but so was Canton. On each side of it were white, loosely woven curtains. They didn't keep out the sunlight, when the sun decided to cut through the fog, or the images of aliens rushing about, whispering to each other, and taking trays to other beds.

The curtains parted.

"Ah," said an old alien, white haired with matching beards running down his twin chins. The eyes of his right face looked at Canton. His second set of eyes avoided Canton's own. Stubbornly. Canton got the feeling that he was being impolite and just focused on the right face. The face didn't let on if Canton had offended it. It was about this time that Canton realized he had been spoken to. The first time since he had woken up wherever he was.

"You speak English," Canton said, nowhere near as astonished as he would have been a year ago by his present circumstances. Now, this was merely a happy turn of events.

"I don't know what language it is you speak, half-man," the old alien said, looking thoughtful. "This is the language of the Half-King. It is a strong language. A true language, they say. Not many on this planet can learn it." Canton accepted this instantly, but the old alien seemed to want to explain further.

"It speaks in," the old alien looked around as if he was looking for the right word, possibly one which was floating around him. He could have said 'Platonic Ideals', but that term did not exist on Gallifrey or Alfalfa-Matraxis. "Bigness," the old alien settled on a word. Finally.

"But then how can you understand me?" Canton asked, sitting up straighter in his bed.

"I think you are asking how I can understand you," the old alien said. "Alas, I cannot. Gibberish. You speak a small language while I have spent two decades conquering a large one." He looked sympathetic, if a little smug.

"But they have called me to this place of healing to explain to you where you are and reassure you that it is all for a greater purpose," the man beamed. Canton didn't. He didn't like where this was going. Why did Canton seem to bump into religious types wherever he found himself?

"Half-Man," the old alien went on, standing up and spreading his arms, "how would you like to kill an emperor?"

Canton smiled weakly and knew nothing he said would matter.

–

And somewhere on Alfalfa-Matraxis, far away from anywhere that might rightly be called civilized, a madman ran about. Erratically. As madmen are prone to do.

A two-week beard made him look a prophet in the deep, azure jungles of Alfalfa-Matraxis. Talking to himself, screaming at bits and pieces of alien machinery, and, when remembering that she was there, calming down and sitting next to a frightened little girl. Herself without a home.

But the madman was rebuilding the love of his life, so one might find it in their hearts to forgive him his outbursts and wish him well.


	12. Sparring

"This," the Doctor began, holding up a piece of something - maybe a whisk? - "is the TARDIS." He beamed and then frowned and then stroked the half-beard he had grown in the past two weeks of ranting, frenzied silence. Behind him was what resembled a small table in the soil. Well, a table only if one didn't particularly care that it was too steeply slanted for any cups or food to stand upon without tumbling to the ground. Melody shrugged inwardly. At least he was talking to her instead of at her general vicinity for the first time in a week.

The Doctor frowned as if something about his own words had turned sour in his mouth.

"Well," he went on, "it would be if - it's rather complicated - do you know about cells?"

Melody did. She brightened.

"Smaller division of terrorist groups. Best dealt with through total annihilation by military forces given lethal sanctions covertly, providing deniability to government or church officials." Melody didn't know where the words had come from, but she did know that they were right. She was rather clever, wasn't she? The Doctor's frown deepened. He must have not known about cells.

"Ah," he started, and then, "I meant more in the biological sense."

"What does that word mean?" Melody asked. Did words often have more than one meaning?

"Biological?" the Doctor looked at Melody for a long time without answering, as if seeing her for the first time, "it means life. Didn't they teach you about life?"

"Didn't who teach me about life?" Melody was puzzled.

"The people who," the Doctor started and then sat down, dropping the whisk — the cell — letting it fall into the thick, partially burnt soil which characterized the clearing in the middle of blue forest where the Doctor's ship — the TARDIS — the debris of the TARDIS — crashed. Or perhaps, the clearing the ship had created into which to crash. Earlier the Doctor had muttered something about a four dimensional impact. The Doctor finished, distantly, "made you."

"My parents?" Melody sat down beside him, leaning against the tweed of his jacket. He was a funny, sad man, but he meant well, this funny old — why did he look so young? — man. The Doctor didn't respond at first.

"Do you ever get dreams or hear voices?" the Doctor tried again. Melody's stomach lurched. She did. All the time.

"No," Melody lied. The Doctor laughed. Not believing her. But it was a good natured laugh, as if Melody's lie was just making a game more interesting. Suddenly the Doctor rolled his weight back onto his arms, standing up as abruptly as he had sat. Honestly, could this Doctor not make up his mind? The Doctor shrugged off his jacket. Melody had never realized just how pink the shirt underneath was, or noticed the bright red straps which attached his trousers to his shoulders.

The Doctor began to stretch. First putting his arms behind his neck, then touching his toes. He squatted and took deep, loud breaths, as if preparing for a sprint.

"Let's fight," the Doctor said.

Melody gaped.

"You're joking," Melody began as a booted kick glanced past her head. Dangerously close and at full force. Maybe he wasn't.

"Right," the Doctor stopped his fluid movements as quickly as they had begun. His awkward, slumping posture returning in a blink. "Shoes! Sorry," The Doctor apologized, falling to a sitting position. He undid the laces to his boots with a painstaking focus that would have looked fastidious on any other grown adult. But Melody's weeks with the Doctor, quiet, sad weeks, woefully bereft of the kind of information or reunions this man had promised, had firmly characterized this man to Melody as one who would spend as much concentration on untying a shoelace as reassembling the cells of a living ship.

The Doctor finished untying his boots and placed them, with delicate care, alongside his folded professor's jacket.

Then he stood to face Melody.

Once more, the Doctor's entire body language changed in a moment from the bumbling grace of an idiot savant to the dangerous waiting of a trained fighter. Could Melody read body language? That was new.

Or was it?

'Didn't they teach you about life?' the Doctor had asked. Who were they? Had Melody's dreams of the white room been more than dreams? The lines were so blurry and Melody had had so many dreams after breaking her suit. Dreams of a woman with an eye-patch and dreams of men in black suits. Well, not men. Things that watched and clicked and waited. What had they done to her?

What was the Doctor planning to do? Surely not hand her back to some idyllic parents to live forever after in fairytale bliss. Melody did not know who had been teaching her, but she had certainly learned that those sorts of things didn't happen.

"Is this about those chicken-looking-lizard-things I bring back?" Melody tried to be the joking one of the two for a change. "Look, I know you're a vegetarian, you made that more than clear the first night. But I need to eat." A punch whipped out of the Doctor and into Melody's shoulder. Hard but restrained, as if probing to see how Melody would react.

Melody reacted by ignoring the pain, becoming cross, and falling into a stance she did not recognize. The Doctor smiled. He sidestepped a kick that, Melody realized as soon as she performed it, might have knocked off the Doctor's head if it had connected.

"You don't need to eat," the Doctor blocked Melody's following punch with ease and tried not to show how much it hurt. He failed. "Ouch," he said, but his smile never left his eyes, "you shouldn't need to eat. Your connection to the time stream should sustain you for the most part. Maybe a meal every other decade? That's the norm. Your body is most likely suffering from delusions of humanity. Understandable, but it's something we need to work on." He finished and returned Melody's punch. Melody got her block up this time. She had it up almost before he had moved to strike.

How did that happen?

The Doctor's smile grew, but he did nothing to relent or cede his advantage. He delivered a punch, a throw, and four light kicks with an unconcerned swagger. Half of them even connected. That was beginning to annoy Melody. If the Doctor was going to win whatever this was, shouldn't he try to take it seriously?

"You're not dressed for this." Melody didn't know if she was trying to distract the Doctor, hurt his feelings, or end this fighting through logic. Her comment did none of the above. Melody barely got out of the way of another set of kicks that would have knocked her into the blue tree behind her if it had touched her. The young girl was put off-stance, but the Doctor had his back to her now. A foolish move.

"Oh, I've done this in a cape and frock," the Doctor laughed. "Suspenders and a bow-tie? It gives me range!" Melody launched into a kick, putting all of her strength behind it. Without even looking, the Doctor caught Melody's kick and slammed her into the soft soil of the clearing. He stopped, not letting go. Melody panted.

"Now," the Doctor started after a pause, "how did I do that?"

"You read my body language," Melody insisted, cross, but knew the Doctor had been looking the other way.

"No," the Doctor smiled as if he were oh-so-clever, "I looked into the future."

"That's impossible," Melody almost shouted. Stupid lies and fighting. This was the worst day. Of course, it could have just been how spectacularly Melody had lost that had her on edge. Why did that matter? Melody had never been in a fight before a few weeks ago.

Maybe. Probably not.

"No, it's just unwise," the Doctor let go of Melody's ankle and let her fall onto the soil. He sat before her, himself panting a little bit. The effort made Melody feel a little better. Only a little.

"Someone taught you Venusian Aikido," the Doctor told Melody. His eyes didn't match the stern expression the rest of his face was attempting. "I don't know if they had a copy of my old UNIT file or if they just had the same rather brilliant idea that I did."

"What's Venusian Aikido?" Melody asked and then cursed herself for being so on cue.

"It's a fighting style practiced by Venusians," the Doctor replied, mocking Melody's obvious question. And then, "No, we're not Venusians. It takes two things to be any good at Venusian Aikido: four arms and precognitive aptitude. As Time Lords, we have enough of the latter to make up for our regrettable lack of the former."

"I can see into the future?" Melody was going to need to stop asking the obvious questions. But then, it was the first time the Doctor had been interested in imparting actual answers since the day she had met him on the rooftops of New York, worlds away.

"Your body can," the Doctor looked at Melody carefully. "If you work at it, you can too. But it isn't advised. It messes with causality which, if not a hard, fast rule, is an advisable ideal. It can also make you a bit," he swirled his finger around his temple to indicate that it could make you a total loon. Melody wondered if the Doctor had seen into the future too much.

"But the exercises and forms which characterize Venusian Aikido are designed to subconsciously unlock your precognitive abilities. Not too much. Just enough to turn a hit into a block or a block into a parry. Your forms are sloppy, but you're only just remembering them." The Doctor looked at her sympathetically, a look that Melody realized was devoid of condescension. He was that kind of man, Melody thought, if nothing else.

"That said, your enhanced strength, speed, and reaction time more than make up for it." It was the first time that the Doctor had mentioned anything different about Melody in terms other than 'Time Lord'.

"I thought this was because I was like you," Melody started. Feeling slightly betrayed.

"Oh," the Doctor didn't seem perturbed. "I'm sure it's possible because you're a Time Lord, but the same process which made you one somehow changed the fundamentals of your connection with the time stream. I don't know if whoever did this to you was brilliant or a total idiot. Probably both. You've regenerated twice since we've been on Alfalfa-Matraxis. What does that put you at? Seven? Eight?"

The Doctor looked at her. Just a creep of worry on his brow. As if he was asking something important but didn't want to commit to the implications of what Melody's answer might mean.

"Thirty-seven," Melody replied. The Doctor almost choked, fully back into the transparent, bumbling manner in which he normally held himself. For the first time, Melody wondered if it was a choice.

"Perfectly normal," the Doctor was distant and obviously lying. "But maybe we could get it down to once every few centuries. Probably better for your... life-force."

"Like the TARDIS?" Melody tried to change the subject, even though her mention of the Doctor's crashed ship would more than likely send him into another week-long frenzy, shutting Melody out of his awareness. Again. "Biological?" she added, unsure.

"Hah," the Doctor said, but began to eye the debris around them. Was it just Melody's imagination, or had it grown in the last week? "No, not biological. The Tardis is alive, yes, she exists at all moments in space and time, but she's not bound by any silly qualification on life like 'biological'! Pfah!" The Doctor got up and began rooting around the pieces of crashed ship.

"Why," the Doctor muttered to himself, "if the Tardis was-" he trailed off, continuing his rant in his head.

Melody had lost the Doctor once more. She sighed and was alone.

—

By the time the Minister of Interesting Stuff knocked on the doors to the Master's chambers, the Master had decided that maybe he had been wrong to judge the Alfalfa-Matraxian's efforts at wine making so harshly. Sure, the first few glasses made your throat bleed, but there were sometimes more important qualities in a vintage. Like proof. Eighty proof, to be exact. What wonderfully two-headed idiots, the Master thought and ignored the obvious interruption.

When the knocking persisted, the Master sighed and shouted for the small, old man to come in. The Master didn't recognize him.

"Who is you," the Master asked, distantly but also quite too loudly.

"Half-King," the old man knelt, his twin white beards touching the floor. "I have come. With the interesting 'stuff' that my office charges me to bring."

"Who is you," the Master repeated, a little startled, "and who taughted you Gallifrey... speak?" The old man stood up and stepped back. Was he making a mess of himself? Again? Oh bother, he didn't want to erase someone out of embarrassment. Again.

"Why," the man's right head started, "you did! Over the course of two decades I have been your faithful student and..." he went on, but the Master stopped listening. Had the timeline shifted again, or was he really that drunk? Hrm. The answer was probably a bit of both.

"Fine, fine," the Master stood and interrupted his new/old student. "What is your stuffs?"

"There has been a space-crash, my liege," the old alien started.

"That's not interesting!" the Master almost fell over as he stumbled towards the old man. "That's barely stuffs!" The Master tried to concentrate on killing this man twenty years ago but he was just barely too wrecked to resolve anything concretely. Also, this man was ancient. Twenty years ago it would probably be harder to kill him. The Master sighed and began to contemplate just how he would murder this old, two-headed annoyance. Where was his laser screwdriver?

"My lord," the old man either saw the murderous intention in the Master's eyes or was just officiously eager to please, "this crash has been going on for three weeks! Continuously!"

The Master stopped.

"Did I let you use the things?" the Master needed to keep the timeline straight. That was getting harder and harder.

"I have been attentive at the Gateway, yes," the ancient crone — was crone an acceptable term or was it gender-restricted? — replied, dutifully. As if that technology wasn't supposed to be top secret. What had this version of the Master been up to?

"So it's crashing through space -" the Master began. Sitting down suddenly on the cold iron floor of throne room. Through the drink he barely felt his tailbone bruise.

"And time," the minister finished. The Master scowled. He didn't like being interrupted. But then the force of the words hit him and suddenly none of this tedious Alfalfa-Matraxis nonsense mattered to him anymore.

The Doctor was here!

The Master stood and grinned. Oh, this was Christmas! But wait, what was he doing drunk — oh my, rather sickeningly, embarrassingly drunk — when there was work to be done?

The Master concentrated and burned.

"Ah," the Master said to his rather startled Minister of Interesting Stuff — was his beard less gray and more white now? — and smiled with a wholly new mouth, "that's better. Now come along, whoever you are, we have interesting stuff to attend!"

It was a very good day.


	13. Sailing

Throughout the infinite expanses of the cosmos; throughout time and space.

They flew.

All as one. Together and yet completely and utterly alone. The Weeping Host soared throughout the expanse of the universe. They hungered and, in time, they would devour. That was nature; the way of things. It had been so since the beginning of everything. Or close enough.

Eyes covered, the quantum expanse of the Weeping Host knew no limitations of Light or Time. They swarmed and devoured and the flew and swarmed and devoured. A family of Star-Whales proved no more an obstacle than the living moon of Rallis-7. Not to the Host, the ultimate predator.

That was the universe as it was intended. That was their own existence. As long as the expanse of everything had been whole, the angels had been there with their kindness and their hunger.

It was one angel which first felt the amazing chronal instability, the temporal flux which rang out throughout the galaxy with its promise of sustenance and momentary contentment. But the angels are solitary only in their spacial sense. Within a parsec, the whole of the host felt the exceeding potential that the chaotic ragings of the flux promised. The hunger that enticed, inflaming their desire.

They swooped. They swarmed.

To feast.

—

Canton found he quite enjoyed sailing. He had not been expecting that. It seemed almost a heretical subversion of the bad-to-worse sequence that Canton had been following around for years. Disgrace to discharge to weirdness to languishing to weirdness to other planets to, finally, sailing.

But sailing was nice.

The ship — Canton couldn't pronounce the name, not even when the old alien had said it in "Big" — was a barely larger than a schooner, manned by five aliens and their captain, a bearded, robust, thoroughly browned alien who laughed loud and often. There was just one sail, a giant purple monstrosity that looked almost like a leaf from some staggeringly huge tree. The rest of the boat was a deep brown wood that smelled like hard work and salt.

Canton's black suit, shoes, and gun were packed in wax paper at the bottom of a chest the old git had given him before leaving him at the dock, a single plank stretched over a warm, red-sanded beach. The rest of the chest was filled with appropriate clothing for a denizen of Alfalfa-Matraxis. Loose fitting tunics made of light material in rich greens and blues, the extra head-holes hastily sewn up. They were comfortable, but slightly off center on Canton, whose neck protruded directly from the center of his shoulders rather than a little off to the right and left.

He had considered learning to sew in order to fix the inconvenience — it had a long time since Canton had had an urge to better himself or his situation — but he had been hard at work for the last two days. There was a language barrier between Canton and the leathery, sun-dried Alfalfa-Matraxians who made up the rest of the crew, but Canton found them good enough company — for aliens. Canton had merely emulated their comings and goings and, proving a not-all-together-worthless hand at some of their daily chores, they had accepted him soon enough as just another one of the crew. The work was exhausting, but in a good way. Maybe it was merely in contrast to the withdrawl which had rendered him delirious for days, but Canton felt strong. His hands had begun to callus but had never blistered. He didn't get seasick, as he had always expected he would have if he were to sail.

And the air. Canton didn't know if the sea smelt so — what was it? — spicy on Earth, but he had grown to love that smell on Alfalfa-Matraxis. The mauve sunsets at the end of of a hard day's work, the spiny fish he helped drag in and de-bone for dinner, the astonishingly bright stars in the night sky, outshone only by the twin moons; Canton was happy. Sometimes he even forgot about the Doctor and Melody and Agent Lee and Charles and the grimy, heart-wrenchingly lonely life he had lead on Earth, full of unobtainable desires and eventual estrangement from everyone he let get close.

Not that Canton was just another one of the crew. Not in any manner beyond superficial acceptance. His single head obviously set him apart. He would catch the crew looking at him with one set of eyes or another, when they thought he wouldn't notice. At first, Canton merely accepted it as the unnerving presence of deformity, which he figured he must have been to these aliens, like a one-armed man or a headless ghoul. People were people. Even when they weren't, Canton had reasoned. Burroughs and Wells had been full of shit. It was thoughts like that that had let Canton stay sane, marooned and isolated by an impenetrable language barrier on an alien world. Well, that and the sailing.

But time went on and with it, Canton came to realize that the uneasy looks he was supposed to ignore but never quite could were something more. The other aliens, all but the Captain who magnanimously rambled on and slapped Canton on the back, as if they were sharing some cosmic joke which a unified language would have ruined, met Canton with a mix of fear and — he came to recognize — reverence. This revelation unnerved Canton when thought on it. Did they know why Canton was going to capital? Had the wizened old git of a priest filled them in? Were they themselves religious extremists? Canton realized that he had been shit at recognizing those genre of people even on his own planet.

On the whole, the vibe did not bother Canton. Canton was different wherever he went. At least here people could see it, could treat him as the outsider he had long accepted he was. No more passing for normal, hanging out in his pressed suit, lost in the masses, his own internal world one which would have caused the average man to vomit. It seemed more honest this way. It was just another aspect of sailing that had proven a good fit for Canton's demeanor.

Sometimes Canton would remember the gauntlets and the dagger hidden in a secret compartment down past the false bottom of his chest. His stomach would lurch and he would realize just how much being on a boat complimented his life as it was. Canton could work and relax and eat and watch the sunset on the boat. He could man the sails or tie the anchor or scrub the tiny deck. He could walk one way or walk another. But that did not mean his life was his own. No, Canton's life had not been his own for a very long while.

The boat bore him constantly towards a destiny which he himself had not chosen. There was nothing to do but try and enjoy it and hope he ran into the Doctor before things got too heavy. It probably beat languishing. Probably.

If only Canton could remember what the Doctor had been trying to tell him. It had seemed urgent. Canton sighed and dipped a finger into the deep red sea. It would sort itself out sooner or later. If there was one man in the Universe who did not appear to be on a boat, it was the Doctor.

Though, Canton reconsidered, boats could be big, couldn't they? Maybe if your boat was large enough, you could forget it was there. For a time.

It was about this time, as the sun was setting to the North and hot sea air was beginning to cool and lose its spicy scent which sublimed from it so regularly during the hot day, that Canton saw the angel.

To say it was the thing that Canton least expected to see would be misleading. Canton had pretty much entirely given up on expectations by this point. Humans are perennially an adaptable bunch. There was a reason, beyond hygiene or aesthetic, that the Doctor had taken, to date, five-hundred and seven human companions while only taking three Martians, seven Silurians, one Auton (well, temporarily), a Tribble (well, one at first), and a Dalek as traveling mates. Also a penguin, but they had been more partners in crime than anything. Same for the cats, wherever they got to in the infinite expanses of the TARDIS.

Canton didn't know any of this. He just knew that expectations had come to let him down as a rule. He didn't miss them anymore than ties. However, the angel certainly hadn't been something Canton was searching for along the horizon. He balked. But not as hard as he would have two weeks ago.

The strangest thing — well, a strange thing — was that, while the angel Canton had spied appeared to be stone, it was floating in the water. Well, floating was the wrong word. It was as if the statue was standing on a pillar that went all the way down to the bottom of the sea. Jade waves lapped at its base, the ship which carried Canton slow approached, but the angel statue before Canton was perfectly still.

"Ahoy!" Canton called to his crewmen. It was probably the wrong term, but nautical vocabulary had not been one of Canton's lessons for obvious reasons. The first mate followed Canton's pointing finger, then his eyes went wide and he shrieked a cry which would have unmanned him utterly on Earth. Perhaps it was different here, Canton wondered. The first mate ran to the railings were Canton stood and began to intently watch the statue with one face. His other face alternated between a hard grimace and utter panic. The face called to the rest of the crew in garbled words. They ran on deck and met the scene in a similar manner as the first mate.

For what happened next, there was no hesitation but every action carried the weight of immense dread. It was as if a dreaded disaster protocol long practiced, was finally being put into effect. One alien raised his hand, bravely at first, but then his knees buckled and he fell to the deck sobbing. The crew picked him up with a solemn reverence and placed him on a small raft that had always rested to the side over the rails of the boat, but which Canton had never payed any mind. Before they lowered him down, the Captain hugged the sobbing crewman, wiped his eyes, and whispered something into his ears with the head that Canton had never seen these aliens use for speaking. It seemed to help. The crewman stopped crying, took a basket of food, cask of water, and three exceedingly bright lanterns and gave a look which signified, even to Canton, that he was ready for what happened next.

The raft drifted off towards the statue of the angel. Off into the sunset. The crew stood at first in silence, before getting to work with a vigor Canton had never seen. They gave the statue so wide a berth that it would almost surely put them off-course. Then the crew went below deck. Canton could hear crying and thought it best he stood apart for a time. The captain stood beside him, staring off into the ever fading sunset. Eventually, the captain went below, the sound of desperate sobbing growing louder as he opened the hatch to go down.

Canton shrugged and watched the fading crewman alone on his tiny raft, the light of his lantern finally winking out in the distance. Perhaps these people were religious extremists after all. This must be some sort of ritual, a sacrifice to a blind, one-headed, winged deity. That was what he told himself, fighting the unease that crept in the spreading dark. The sea air seemed colder, now.

Canton turned his back to the lone vigil and went below deck.

—

The Doctor was almost done. He was so close. Where had he — had that always been there? — when was that going to crash into the clearing? — blasted four-dimensional crash patterns! — Hah! — there it is — oh wait — no, but put that aside to facilitate a smoother regeneration of the — Aha! — now where did the other half get to...

This had been going on for three weeks. The Doctor didn't eat. The Doctor didn't sleep. The Doctor scavenged and tinkered and tried to will — with what was currently functioning as his mind — a teaspoon and a ball of string — together that wonderful, sexy Hieronymus Machine that was the TARDIS. If only — River — Why?

It was so close. If only he could —

The Doctor was kicked in the face. Hard.

Stunned, the Doctor didn't look up from the dirt. He had been holding a piece. And important piece. It was somewhere in the soil. He couldn't lose — Who had kicked him?

The Doctor, realizing he was still holding the unfathomably — well, to be fair there wasn't much the Doctor was capable of fathoming in his current condition — important piece of the TARDIS and sat up, blearily, as if coming up for air for the first time in a month. Close enough to the truth.

A mess of frizzy red hair met his gaze. Frizzy red hair in a ragged brown dress holding a large stick. Melody. Right.

"Have you been practicing your forms?" the Doctor said, looking towards Melody but not at her. Why had she —

"It's not hard to sneak up on you," Melody said with something more than attitude. Anger.

"No, not exploded," the Doctor began, answering a question Melody would have asked in two minutes otherwise by mistake, "if the TARDIS had exploded with us at the heart, we'd have never existed at all. Just time-statues and ghost data in the expanse of nothingness. The Universe, too. Not that we'd notice. No, the TARDIS was shatt-"

The stick came down and hit him in the chest.

"Fight me," Melody said. Severe.

"Don't be ridiculous," the Doctor stood, wiped some of the soil off of his shirt with a rad which had once been his bow-tie, a turned to the near-completed TARDIS console. Melody swung again, but the Doctor caught the blow without looking. He sidestepped another attempt and deftly fit the astrolabe into place, itself a mess of duct tape and will. But it would heal. It had to. Just this once. Please.

Melody flew towards the Doctor's head, but he ducked, either to avoid the blow or two check the placement of a particular panel, and Melody went soaring over both the Doctor and the TARDIS console, flipping and landing gracefully.

"You need to wake up!" Melody yelled. Desperately. "I won't let you drift away forever and leave me."

"I'm right here," the Doctor muttered, inspecting something and then flipping switches at random.

"You're gone," Melody wailed, "you abandoned me for weeks in this rubbish jungle for this rubbish … thing."

This got the Doctor's attention.

"She's not a thing," the Doctor said, not caring for a moment to hold back the coldness in his voice, coldness that felt like it belonged to another lifetime, "she's alive."

And then, more softly, "she needs me."

"I need you!" Melody was shouting, seemingly beyond herself. "You rubbish old man. You drop out of the sky and you promise these impossible things and now I'm alone again. Abandoned. And I abandoned Simon and that was okay, I thought, because there was a magic man and he was going to fix everything but now you don't care. You just want to work on your -" Melody stopped talking and merely seethed. Slowly and deliberately, Melody raised her large stick above her head. In the back of his head, a part of the Doctor guessed her intention and yelled. The rest of him followed shortly.

"Don't!" the Doctor shouted, desperately, somewhere between and order and a plea.

"Give me a reason!" Melody had begun to cry at some point during this exchange, the Doctor realized. Crying silently.

Oh River, the Doctor thought, this is one more thing you'll need to forgive me for. The fight went out of the Doctor and, slowly but deliberately, he closed the distance between he and Melody.

Melody looked at him with dangerous, wet eyes and held the stick in her trembling hands wearily. Then it dropped and she was in his arms.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into Melody's tangled mass of red hair as she sobbed into his shirt.

"You left me alone again," Melody said, muffled and nasal through tears.

"Never again," swore the Doctor quietly. She was only a child, how could he —

The TARDIS woke.

It was as if all the colors in the clearing suddenly became richer and were lit by ubiquitous luminescence. The TARDIS, a universe all its own, overlapped into a new one, free and unrestrained. She embraced them all and coaxed the clearing every which way. Gently. Like a mother. Sexy had stumbled upon a clever bit of something indeed, the Doctor thought, distant now even in his elation. It was hardly ideal, but it was going to be okay, they were going to-

"I appear to be interrupting something," said an unfamiliar voice. The Doctor turned, still holding Melody to his chest, to meet the eyes of a two headed ghost. But that was impossible.

"Who are you?" the Doctor said, not caring just how far above that question he was supposed to be.

"Ah," the ghost sighed mournfully, "that's the wrong question. They told me you were supposed to be some sort of wise man."

"Not my best day," the Doctor muttered and declined to inquire just who they were.

"Well," the ghost went on, "I'm not anyone. Not anymore."

"And who were you once?" the Doctor asked, wearily.

"No one. Never," the ghost said softly, never.

"I don't -" the Doctor didn't like where this was going. And he was beginning to get a good idea about just where that was.

"My name could-have-been Rigelax Metraxis," the ghost said. The Doctor flinched at the words and held Melody more tightly, "I'm afraid we're all in a whole lot of trouble."

They were.


	14. Rebooting

"It's very important to possess the advantage of environment when one is set on killing the Doctor," the Master began, pushing open the intimidatingly large doors to his secret armory. The room was woefully bare of anything technological but had plenty of sharp things mounted on its high, stone walls.

The Master liked sharp things.

Behind him, the Master heard the doddering footsteps of his new/old apprentice alongside hurried pants. Some people just couldn't keep up. The Master wondered what exactly he was supposed to have seen in this old fool whose name he didn't know and hadn't asked. Some version of him must have gone soft down the line. This was the problem with temporal flux. Shaking his head, the Master abandoned his musings for the arousing sound of his own voice.

"This isn't to say," he went on, "that one literally needs to hold the high-ground. To be sure, that just makes it easy for the Doctor. Build a machine of order and control and the Doctor will waltz in, hurl a wrench into your psychic control network and hold you in his arms as your world crumbles away." The Master realized he was getting emotional. Blasted body, the Master cursed himself for regenerating under the influence. He couldn't be sentimental, he was going to murder the Doctor. Wasn't he? Yes, stop it.

"Honestly, pre-industrial is a boon if you can stand the smell and flowy tunics," the Master continued. Secretly, the Master enjoyed his flowy tunics. "He does like to tinker, that Doctor."

"Rassilon knows..." the Master muttered absently, and then, "well actually sure, take that. Rassilon. Founder of Time Lord society. Ineffable wisdom that ruled over the time/space continuum for millennia and then from beyond the grave and then he even came back to spread some more wisdom and control. Also war. War on a scale that would melt your brain. Big, scary man is what I'm getting at it, you understand." The Master took a sword off one of the walls. He liked weapons, why did he never seem to carry them? Of course, he was rather proud of the laser screwdriver that he had had cobbled together from a few salvaged power-cells and brass wires, but swords were a thing all their own. The slender blade cut through the air nimbly as the Master tested the balance. He grinned at the perfection. The Alfalfa-Matraxians couldn't pull off an industrial revolution to save their own lives — literally — but they made damn fine swords.

"And what happens when Rassilon and the Doctor finally meet? And by meet, I mean that Rassilon had constructed a four-dimensional trap, reaching back into the Doctor's — well, my — past and planting the seeds of his own triumph and escape. There stood Rassilon, leading a hoard of Time-Warriors, ready to break reality and transcend the most abstract limits of physical perception — which really start to get you down if you traipse long enough through the seventh dimension as Rassilon tended to do — standing against an ensnared Doctor."

The Master paused for dramatic effect. But as the moment lingered, he began to sulk. Stupid new personality, he should burn through it at the first chance.

"Well, to put it plain," the Master began again, finally, trying to take solace in his own monologue, "trust me, there is one thing you never put in a trap." The Master shrugged, "well, if you're smart."

Was this body a trap, somehow constructed by the Doctor? Had someone once again hijacked the Master's own psyche? Or maybe he just didn't want to confront some lingering feelings about — no, it was probably the Doctor. All the more reason to run the bastard through both his hearts. The thought made the Master swell. He hadn't killed any non-infants in a fortnight. Slowly he raised his sword and prepared to savor the sweet demise of his assistant, a growing metaphor for the Master's temporal instability. But no, he might be useful. Perhaps that was exactly what the Doctor wanted. My, he was rather paranoid now. Though that was hardly unique to this form.

For a moment, the Master studied his new face in the polished surface of his blade. Strikingly cold blue eyes, pale skin, and wavy black hair met him. The Master smiled appreciatively. He could live with this. He might even try to hold onto this for a while. At least until he killed the Doctor.

"Indeed, coming at the Doctor from a position of desperate weakness seriously undermines his modus operandi," The Master went on, ambivalent in this moment of vanity whether his reluctance to kill the old git was a temporally induced affection or a biological defect. He looked back at the withered alien, who appeared to be listening intently. Well, at least there was that.

"But," The Master began again and gestured towards the secret door — well, as secret as any door which glowed that brightly could be called — to the side of them, "that option appears to be closed to us."

It was with great relish that the Master opened the glowing door.

—

"We're not on Alfalfa-Matraxis," the ghost said, as if just realizing it. Had he had been capable of emoting, Melody thought the ghost might have been startled. What did he mean? They were in the clearing, just as they had been a moment ago. Just as they had been for a month.

Though in the back of her mind, Melody felt something. A presence. A glowing warmth that came from nowhere and touched everything. Of course, she might just have been disoriented from the sobbing. Why had she gotten so — no, it had been deserved. And it had worked. Somehow, the Doctor was back. Bearded and raggedy, but back. Maybe now she would find her — the hollowness in Melody's stomach silenced that hope before it could be articulated. She wasn't a girl anymore. She was strong. She wouldn't trust him again, no matter what kinds of lies the Doctor told.

But still, that warmth. It was as if someone was watching her lovingly while she was sleeping, though Melody could only imagine that feeling in the abstract. Involuntarily, Melody nestled closer into the Doctor's jacket.

Rubbish old loon, she thought and then looked back to their unexpected visitor.

The ghost looked around the color-enriched — what was that all about? — jungle. From the safety of the Doctor's arms, Melody studied the transparent, two-headed interloper distrustfully and then looked up at the Doctor. He seemed to be smiling again through his brown, wispy beard. Well, there was that. For the first time, Melody wondered if the Doctor smiling was actually a good thing. He seemed to do it at the worst times.

"No, not at this particular time," the Doctor said and put Melody down on the soft soil beside him. He touched a finger to his lips and his eyes brightened with excitement. "But don't let on. We need to save our best surprises for just the right moment."

So full of himself already after a month of sporadic lucidity, Melody thought to her own chagrin and then wondered where her vocabulary had come from. She had noticed that happening more and more since she had begun practicing her Venusian Aikido forms.

He frowned.

"You do remember moments, don't you?" the Doctor began to circle the specter.

"I don't remember anything," the ghost — Rigel-Axe-Matra-Axe or something Melody recalled him referring to himself — said with a hint of mournfulness, "you can't remember what never happened."

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do," the Doctor snapped, his hair almost bristling. Melody wondered why the Doctor was so afraid of ghosts. The Doctor relaxed after a moment, "but I suppose you are beholding to more mainstream rules of time and space." He corrected himself, "were."

"Never-was," the thing corrected the Doctor in turn, and then, "I can feel the temporal flux of the once-was, the never-was. Tiny eddies of possibility filled almost before they arise. It's so big here. I don't think I should be able to feel or see anything. But I can feel everything. Can you feel it?"

"I can," the Doctor said said, wearily and looked around. "Yes, I've been having a bit of a Thursday Afternoon for the last — well — month, if you understand — well, of course you can't, you can't empathize with anything — but I can feel them... screaming." Fear crept into the Doctor's voice with this last word. Fear and bewilderment. Melody closed her eyes and tried to hear what was upsetting the Doctor so much but only succeeded in giving herself a headache.

"But this is impossible," the Doctor insisted, "Alfalfa-Matraxis never industrialized, it won't have a technologically advanced enough society to muck around with the time stream for millennia. Who could be -"

"There is a name."

"Of course there is," the Doctor sighed and sat down in the soil. He held his head in silence and made no move. Melody was too put off to say anything. Had he gone away again? Had the Doctor broken another promise? For ten minutes, the Doctor was silent and Melody was alone once more, her rage and protest muted by sinking surprise.

The ghost silently waited.

"Sorry," the Doctor said, rising just as suddenly as he sat, just as Melody was about to look for her large stick, "knew I wasn't going to get a quiet moment for a good long while. Not that it usually bothers me, but when my brain turns on — well — it can be rather a tempest." The Doctor smiled, spun, walked over to the ghost, and tried to slap it on the back reassuringly. His hand traveled through the two headed vision's chest cavity. Melody laughed despite herself. He was back. Really back. Again. She'd have to do something about that rubbish beard.

"Now," the Doctor began, "who are we dealing with? The Daleks? Oh I hope not. I have enough of a headache without their cross blarrings rumbling about the back of my head. Have you ever heard the Dalek psychic frequencies? Terrible brain-ache. It's not just that it's so loud and hateful, but that it's so monotonous. Not to mention the color-scheme. The Cybermen? I could go for some Cybermen right now. Big, bulky Cyberman. I feel like a run. The Centaurans? I'd dislike that. Just met one I liked. Autons? Ditto. Gelf? That could be fun. A Rogue Ood sect? Never underestimate a Rogue Ood. I mean that. Ask Lovecraft. Or, rather, don't. He still gets night terrors. The Headless Monks? Hrm, I hate repeats. Draconians? Void-Bringers? Now there's a color-scheme. All crimson and smoke. I could do with a aesthetically pleasing ravenous hoard at the moment. His Eminence of Iron-Roses? This seems like his flavor of quantum upheaval or -"

"The Half-King," the ghost said, soft yet burdened with the weight of quiet terror.

"Ah," the Doctor said, excitedly. Then his smile faded, "Who?"


	15. Interlude: Restocking

"But Professor," Ace called somewhere behind the Doctor, her attitude cutting through the sounds of a bustling bazaar, "I don't even like tea."

This stopped the Doctor in his tracks. He leaned on his umbrella and spun to face his reluctant companion, perfectly executing a move he had taught to Charlie Chaplin only a week earlier; relative time.

"That," the Doctor began sternly, "is the most R-r-r-ridiculous thing I have ever heard you say, Ace." The Doctor rolled his R's with a relish that cut through his momentary annoyance. "You might as well say you don't like food," he pointed out, "or air."

"And what more," the Doctor perked up and closed the distance between himself and Ace, sweeping her along the busy thoroughfare, a cacophony of shouting, haggling, and spicy smells, "it's a beautiful day in Baghdad. A little hot, but pleasantly so. There's a reason we never wind up in the amazon."

Ace looked around appreciatively as she was pulled along in synch with the Doctor's quick pace. "I suppose it's a bit of alright," she nodded, "I thought it would be dirtier."

"Ah, yes," said the Doctor, "you come from very far away indeed. In more than a few senses."

The Doctor stopped and stood for a moment outside a particularly beautiful mosque, appreciating the golden dome and the intricate calligraphy that interwove the mosaic of tiles adorning its sides. Arabic was the only language the Doctor didn't let the TARDIS auto-translate for him. It ruined a fascinating aesthetic of words which wove in and out of complex patterns, enhancing their beauty and meaning. Language as art was something the Doctor could appreciate, certainly.

He smiled to himself as Ace grew bored over to the side and began studying an argument which was breaking out between a man sitting with what appeared to be a golden abacus and a woman who kept her hair in a long black braid. Over her face she wore a flimsy, transparent veil. She was shouting something, but it was too far away to make out her words, just the general impression of someone whose day had been ruined.

"What's that?" Ace asked, perking up.

"Oh," the Doctor harrumphed dismissively, "he was telling her fortune and I don't think she was particularly happy with the results. The device is a kind of brass computer. Utter nonsense, of course, but it's an admirable piece of -"

"Fortune telling," Ace said, cutting the Doctor out. "Isn't that stuff illegal in a theocracy, Professor?"

"It would be frowned upon by any Muslim of the time, surely," the Doctor answered, "but I don't believe that's an issue at the moment. The woman is Christian. The man's a Sufi Mystic."

"Ah," Ace started, and then, confused, "then why is she wearing-"

"That veil?" the Doctor finished for her. "I expect it's for the same reason you insist on wearing that tasteless jacket," the Doctor punctuated this by pointing his umbrella at the ridiculous monstrosity of black leather and "Sex Pistols" pins. Completely out of place in the time period, region, and era.

"To annoy you?" Ace smiled like she was oh-so-clever.

"Fashion," the Doctor corrected, "her own idea of it. Muslim dress won't go out of style with Christians living in the East for centuries. And why should it? If she had been born in the West, she would had died quite horribly, I'm afraid," the Doctor squinted at the woman across the street harder and with great interest.

"Yes," he reaffirmed, as if reading her possible lives like a human might read a manuscript, "burnt alive by church officials. Inter-sect warfare is nasty business on any planet. Much better off here," he smiled, brightening, "she's going to have twins!"

Ace rolled her eyes at this display at weirdness and began to wipe sweat from her brow.

"Well I don't think you're one to talk about fashion sense, Professor," Ace grumbled. "Anyhow, I got this jacket signed by Disaster Area. Don't you remember?"

"White is good for the heat, my dear, my hat and umbrella are perfect for shade" the Doctor retorted with mock severity. He smiled and lifted his hat off his head, revealing a shock of graying black hair and a brow which wasn't sweaty at all. It helped that Time Lords were naturally a few degrees cooler than humans.

"Come now, Ace. This the Arab Empire in the twelfth century, a culture at it's height! There hasn't been a more tolerant or vibrant civilization since Rome fell and there won't be another for a good number of centuries!" The Doctor smiled and pulled Ace back into the crowd, "let's get good and lost, shall we?"

—

Ace trudged along, once again lagging behind the Professor, just a white safari jacket in the distance. She both loved and hated this part. The sights and smells of the busy marketplace washed over her. The fashion, the colors, the sounds, the real-ness of it all. The sense it would inevitably give way to something terrifying.

History was a whole different concept when you ran with the Professor, Ace thought to herself. In books and school, everything had to be compressed or generalized, a hundred years into a handful of names and a paragraph. The past needed to be compartmentalized, a tool to be used, to fit inside one's head, but never to be lived. It was one of the marvels of traveling with the Professor that you could lose site of amidst the aliens and the paradoxes and the demigods. Ace smiled, ruefully and decided to relish the moment and not care that this was all a glorified trip down to the corner shop.

1158 was a whole year here. Full of little dramas and loves and tears and happenings and successes and ruins. Three sun-browned men walked, laughing, out of a building which, by the steam which followed them out the door, must have been a Bathhouse. A camel got loose a few dozen yards away, knocking down a stall, the owner shouting flinchingly specific profanities. Off to the side, away from prying eyes, two young lovers shared a private moment in one another's embrace. Ace looked away.

She looked ahead and noticed the Professor had stopped in front of a ramshackle building over which hung a sign that said something in a Arabic squiggles. That was weird, wasn't the TARDIS supposed to translate everything automatically? She jogged over to the Professor, cursing her own stubbornness as the heat beat down upon her and became trapped in the mass of black leather that was her signature jacket.

"Where is this?" Ace asked.

"Ah," the Professor said, as if just realizing Ace was there, "Ace. How good of you to join us." He spread his arm magnanimously over towards a small, balding, brown man with a pointy beard whom Ace had failed to notice. "This is Ibn Jubayr, a very dear friend of mine and, before you ask, not that Ibn Jubayr. Though he's quite nice as well." Ace shook the man's hand and wondered who that Ibn Jubayr was. The man had an easy smile, as if meeting new people was a genuine thrill. Ace decided she liked Jubayr.

"Jubayr is the best tea merchant west of the Great Wall of China," the Professor bragged.

"Your friend flatters me," Jubayr said in perfect english, a handy side effect of the TARDIS, "but I'm afraid I do him a disservice. I cannot remember ever meeting you, my dear -" he looked at the Professor embarrassed. The Professor looked sheepish, as if he had committed a faux pas.

"Smith," the Professor said, "Johan Smith."

"Ah," the merchant's face lit up, "are you related to John Smith? Tall Frank? Long scarf?"

"I'm afraid so," the Professor said, and then whispered loudly into the Jubayr's ear, "bit of a loud, arrogant showboat, my brother." Jubayr looked shocked, as if the Professor had insulted someone to whom he owed his life. The Professor, seeing this, sighed and relented, "but he's family so I put up with him regardless."

"I know what it's like for others in the family to hog all the height," Jubayr said, magnanimously, and laughed.

Jubayr opened the door to the shack and showed them into his tea shop. It was dark and a bit run down, but comfortable in a way which Ace couldn't fully explain. And bigger inside than the little shack had looked on the outside. But that, Ace rationalized, was impossible. Probably.

"Come, sit, make yourselves at home," Jubayr went on, leading them around the common room. "The Waning Crescent Tea Shop has been in my family for centuries. Why, Abu Nuwas wrote "Poems of Wine and Revelry" just over there at that table." Jubayr swept his arm over towards a small table in the corner of the shop which Ace had not initially noticed.

At it sat a slim, black man who was drinking a steaming cut of tea and reading what appeared to be a novel. But that was impossible as well. Looking closer, Ace realized it was David Copperfield. It was! The stranger's deep green coat was pulled up at the collar and thoroughly anachronistic. He looked up, met Ace's gaze, and smiled warmly. Ace got the strange sensation that this was someone she knew. No. That was impossible.

"He's lying," the Professor whispered to Ace, breaking her train of thought. "Abu Nuwas kept company far wilder than the Waning Crescent has ever housed. Well, aside from me. It's funny how figures get reinterpreted over time." The Professor looked over to the man in the green coat, smiled, and tipped his hat. The man returned the look and nodded. Then, the Doctor turned away and took Ace's arm, drawing her towards a table near the window where Jubayr was waiting for them.

"Professor," Ace whispered urgently, "is that — I don't know why but it seemed like —"

"Yes," the Professor, "I'm usually better about this sort of thing, but I do so love the Waning Crescent."

"Is that bad?" Ace felt like this should have been important.

"Oh," the Professor waved it away, "this is nothing, it's not as if -"

His words were cut short as he walked into a tall, thin man who Ace could have sworn hadn't been standing there a moment before.

The man went, "wah" and fell over. Ace looked down at his sprawled figure. He wore a pink shirt, professor's jacket, and sported a red bow-tie.

Bullocks, Ace thought to herself.

"Doctor," said a small girl, a mess of red hair and freckles in a grimy brown dress who had definitely not been there a second before, "where are we?" In her hands, she held an aluminum - her own, Ace realized, startled - bat, wearily.

"Yeah," said a third man, "this doesn't look like the TARDIS." Ace looked over to see a short, balding man wearing a well pressed black suit. His left hand hovered over his chest, indicating to Ace that he was most likely holding a piece. She might have to do something about —

"Yes, Doctor," said a cold voice, dripping with derision, "where have you gotten us this time?" The voice was different but the tone was unmistakable. A cold, creeping fear came over Ace as she turned to face the Master, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Jet black hair made pale skin look paler and cold, blue eyes all the colder.

"Ah," said the thin man in the bow-tie, picking himself off the floor and looking at Ace and the Professor.

"Ah," replied the Professor.

"This could be trouble," they said at once.

The thin man smiled, sheepishly.

The Professor didn't.


	16. Visiting

Say one thing for Alfalfa-Matraxis, Canton thought to himself as he stepped off of the ship and onto the red beaches of the capital city – Canton hadn't caught the name, though he was getting good at cherry-picking the general sounds of proper nouns out of the gibberish that the Captain and the one-less crew spoke – it was not a humid planet. Water seemed almost snub the atmosphere. It made the heat more bearable, Canton thought, idly, but also most likely had other, disastrous environmental effects. Unless the blue fauna that populated this planet had an entirely different relationship with water than their green, Earth counterparts; which, Canton admitted, was more than likely.

The crew of the boat that had sailed Canton through the mauve sea were more than happy to see him off. Something about that religious encounter with the floating, angelic shrine had left a shroud upon the crew's demeanor and Canton had never again felt he was just another hand on deck. He was a burden at best, at worst the subject of an unspeakable – well, maybe, Canton didn't have a grasp on the language – blame that permeated his every interaction.

They were so glad to be rid of Canton that they didn't even stick around to aquatint him with the bustling harbor where they made port. Canton had barely stepped onto the rough, wooden planks which made up the pier and hefted his trunk, lighter with his newly built muscles, over his shoulder before the boat swung out and proceeded to disappear into the setting sun. West, Canton thought for a moment before realizing that the Sun could be setting in any direction it liked, this being a new planet. It might not even be called the sun.

"Aliens," Canton muttered, bewildered, under his breath, and wondered what exactly what he was supposed to be doing in this port. Besides killing a king, that was.

"You're here," boomed a magnanimously proud voice which had haunted all of Canton's dreams which hadn't featured the Doctor. Or Charles. Or the second head of that one crewman. Canton groaned and turned to see the wizened old git who had given him a trunk, clothes, and a ceremonial dagger and pitched him across the sea weeks earlier. Canton's annoyance drowned out his relief to hear what sounded like English for the first time in what seemed like a life time. Also the question of how the alien had gotten here before Canton. Why wouldn't he send Canton the quickest way possible?

"You," Canton said, mostly to himself as he knew the alien couldn't understand him, though Canton could understand anything he said. Talking in Big, the alien had said.

"My friend," the alien's right-head began, holding out his arms as if he was a prophet, "my acolyte. Welcome to –" Canton couldn't understand the next word. It seemed that proper names didn't always translate into "Big", – city of a thousand ships. Jewel of the Purple Sea. Seat of the dreaded Half-King. Or, as I like to call it, Home."

Canton nodded and wondered why facial expressions always seemed to convey the same meaning in this disparate culture. It seemed like it should be more complicated than that. He shook it off in light of present circumstances. Canton often looked gift horses in their mouth, but he hadn't turned one down on account of teeth yet.

"I must be brief," the alien said. Canton thought something snarky it would have done no good to say and rolled his eyes. "The eyes of the Half-King are always upon his most trusted friend, myself. Why, this very shirking of duties will take five years to assuage. But fear not, my friend. We play the long game. Ours is reverence served cold with a hint of -"

There was more but Canton stopped listening. Even relief at hearing English only went so far. Had it always been such a guttural language? Canton considered learning French briefly while the old alien got the point.

"And of course, there is also my friend the Doctor," the old alien said as Canton balked, and a thin, tall, black man with short hair and a long, green coat stepped out from behind Gittly, the name Canton had given the old alien while he hadn't been paying attention.

"Um, hi," Canton said to this one-headed newcomer who clearly was not the Doctor.

"Hello, Canton," the not-Doctor replied calmly and smiled. He nodded his head a bit as he turned to Gittly. "Excuse me," he said as he steered the alien away from Canton and himself. "Canton is an old friend of mine and we have so much to catch up on."

"Oh, well, we have very important -" Gittly began as he was being shown off gently.

"I can assure you that I am versed on all the relevant details of the operation. I can easily pass them along to your operative," he said and gave Gittly a little push into the crowd. "Thank you for being so understanding," he said softly. This other Doctor didn't seem one to get excited. Perhaps he was the one that UNIT had been so interested in.

"Sorry about that," the not-Doctor said, keeping serious for a moment. Then he broke into a toothy, blindingly white smile. He laughed and hugged Canton fiercely. He smelled of sage, Canton realized, shocked by this sudden affection. "I love seeing old faces," he said as he broke the hug. "Especially like this. It adds a little more, well, completeness to things. It's like doing a close re-read of a particularly complex tome. You give yourself more time to absorb the details, make sense of plot points which may have previously mystified," he looked around the busy port, breathed in deep, sighed, and made eye contact with Canton. Then he waited, almost excitedly, for Canton to say something.

"Who?" Canton tried at last, trying not to notice just how high and pronounced this new Doctor's cheekbones were.

"Oh," the new-Doctor looked down at his long, slender fingers, "this. I go through them so fast these days I forgot."

"Fingers?" Canton tried, trying to stand up straight. Wondering if it hair, which he hadn't minded in weeks, had noticeably receded on his sea voyage. Stop that, you stop it, I am stopping it, bounced around his brain.

"Bodies," the man said, and then looked embarrassed, "ah, this is a new model for you. I must be all chins and bowties at the moment. Sorry. You would think the timelines would be easier to get straight but it's about to get pretty timey-wimey from here on out. You should take some time to enjoy causality before you go to that gaudy temple."

"Um," Canton said. And thought. What was causality. What was "timey-wimey" for that matter. What temple. And who was this...

"Doctor?" Canton hazarded.

"Yes?" the maybe-almost-Doctor perked up and swung his arms, bouncing on his toes.

"Why are you black?" Canton asked instead of one of the fifty million questions bouncing around his prefrontal lobe.

"Because I'm from the future, obviously," the Doctor replied as he tilted his head and studied Canton as if trying to remember something. Then it hit him and a sly smile formed on his lips. "Canton you devil. I'm a married man, remember. Plenty of time for all that in the past," the Doctor said and shook his finger at Canton as if fending off inquiries that Canton hadn't been making. Well, maybe thinking them a little. Those cheekbones. And those eyes. Canton had never seen yellow irises before. He shook his head.

"I mean why are you -" Canton began and then remembered the rooftop in 1970. "You regenerated," he said.

"Twice," the Doctor said proudly, "you're looking at lucky number thirteen. I'm having fun breaking it in."

"You're the Doctor." Canton made the mistake of mouthing his disbelief.

"Of course I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said as his yellow eyes widened in shock. "Go on, ask me anything. Well, you know, nothing that would – you know – violate causality. Or embarrassing," he added.

"What did you tell me before the TARDIS crashed," Canton asked immediately.

The Doctor chuckled. "Nice try," he said, "but I happen to know that you don't know yet."

"Well, if you can't answer." Canton tried to look disinterested as he leaned against the pier railing and pretended to enjoy the sea air, slightly violate as mist sublimed off the sea. From behind him a warm breeze blew. The Doctor rolled his magnificent yellow eyes into the back of his refined skull. Much less chin on this one, Canton noticed, appreciatively. The Doctor himself reclined back on the opposite railing, letting his deep green coat part. A canary yellow waistcoat came into view over a burnt orange dress shirt. Hanging from the pocket was a black iron pocket watch which probably should have been stuffed into a pocket but instead swung like a pendulum down near the Doctor's belt. Despite his thick, formal attire, the Doctor seemed immune to the heat. Canton, wiped his brow, still trying to look casual.

Then, suddenly, the Doctor thrust back his head and laughed, his white teeth making another appearance. "Fine," the Doctor relented, as if this was all one big game. Perhaps it was to him, Canton considered. "But you have to look surprised later and ask me quite urgently."

"I will," Canton said and cursed himself for sounding too eager.

"I know," the Doctor sighed. "I said: 'Canton, this is very important. You need to just go with the flow. We're experiencing a four-dimensional crash and I can't lock our timelines like I can Melody's. If you see a boat, jump on it. If you find a door, go through it. These things have a way of working out, I find. But if you stay in one place, you'll become part of the sequence of events and I won't be able to find you. Every step you take will bring you one step closer to me. Don't wallow, press onward.'" The disturbing part was that he delivered this quote in the older Doctor's voice. Perfectly. Mannerisms and all. He even did got the frantic expressions right. It was something to see. Again.

"So that was you then," Canton said after a stunned pause.

"I believe I was just telling you," the Doctor said, seeming quite proud of his impression of himself.

"So then what exactly are you -" Canton began

"Doing here?" the Doctor finished, "breaking the sequence of events? Plotting regicide on an alien world?" Canton shrugged and eyed his heavy wooden chest in the bottom of which lay a ceremonial dagger. Then he nodded.

The Doctor clasped his hands together and grinned eagerly. "Well," the Doctor began, "that's the very best part."

–

"I really hate the Daleks," the Master began as he turned the latch of his secret glowing door. "People think the Doctor and I don't agree on anything and, yes, I suppose that's a fair observation. We don't much care for one another. Well, I got along well enough with the original article, before he got all silver, but something about all the Regenerations made him cross towards me. Then again, I became a tad more homicidal. So it goes." They stepped inside.

The corridor that awaited them was hard for human – well, Alfalfa-Matraxian – well, mortal – eyes to interpret. To them, the Master supposed, it would look like a black void defined by white lines as if tripping through the negatives of an Earth 1930s cartoon. To the Master, one who could see in several new and interesting dimensions, it radiated golden light. Even if it was shoddy, Dalek technology, this was something holy. Walking into the Time Corridor was like a pilgrimage into a second rate Mecca constructed of tin cans and string. Breathtaking yet with a slimy film that make you feel like a shower or a dip in the sun.

"The bowl-cut version was still somewhat adequate. In fact, there was this one time in Montreal, 2015, well let's just say he was an expert flutist," the Master almost blushed as he proceeded through the glowing expanse. Absently, he wondered what this must look like to the Daleks who constructed it. Something boring perhaps. It was a short tangent but it helped dull the throbbing memory of someone he should be more intent on murdering. Yes, murder. That would be better.

"But the Daleks are something else." The Master looked back. The old git was cowering at what must, to him, have seemed a wall of black void. Some people. It was if he had never walked free of 4th dimensional restraints before. "We don't see eye to eye. I don't want you to think this is some sort of inextricable difference between species. That's ridiculous. There were hundreds of Dalek sympathizers back on Gallifrey. Hundreds. How do you think I made my first fortune? Blackmail is a game for amateurs, but as an amateur I played it to win."

The Master looked back to more of the same. He sighed. This was why he never took on sidekicks.

"But, personally, the Dalek sense of order never appealed to me as much as it did some of the austere members of Time Lord society. They buzz about, blast, Exterrrrrrminate," the Master did a perfect impression which had someone struck through countless regenerations, "but in the end, it's like they're just killing so they can do away with stairs or something and sit in their world with only Daleks. No fun." The Master spun around almost dancing but not quite. There was some respect due to this temple of time, decrepit as it was, "Me, I kill for fun."

He let out a laugh and opened the final door at the end of the corridor. It didn't glow or radiate any kind of energy. Quite the opposite. It absorbed any ambient temporal power which happened to drift towards its surface. Ghastly design too, thought that was to be expected from Daleks.

Inside would be the Corridor, the real one. The one which went back twenty years and would allow the Master to complete his unfinished business for the morning, smothering two aids, who had gotten his tea wrong, in their crib. Harsh but fair.

But within the room, the Master did not find the familiar cobblestone floor and the radiating arc of the Time Corridor.

Instead, the Master found a man. He tilted his head and studied this new arrival. Short. Balding. Black suit. Earth 1970s, by the cut. A gun in one hand. A gun. Well, that was new.

"Hello," the Master said, slightly worried but also just pleased to see someone new and unexpected, "are you an assassin."

"Yes," the man said.

"You forgot your dagger," the Master noticed, remembering the seventeen previous attempts. Stuffing Soloists. He should just kill the god, really.

"A friend told me to ditch it." The man shrugged and raised his firearm, "so I tossed it in the sea."

"That was stupid," the Master drawled, not looking forward to being killed again. This body had such nice eyes. Also hands.

"I'm fine with the development." The man cocked his gun.

"Finally!" the old wizened alien shouted in a high-pitched voice behind the Master. "Today is the day! Twenty years! Twenty years ago I found a second Half-King. His shameful lack of head was enough for me to being this treasonous plot against you, oh Master. Now it is I who will rule, I who will -" the alien's ranting betrayal was cut short by the blaring of the newcomer's gun. Straight between the eyes on the rightmost head.

"Huh," the Master said, looking at the bleeding remains of his betrayer.

"Do I need to shoot the other head?" the assassin asked.

"No." The Master cocked his head even further. "They die with just the one."

"Good," the man said and holstered his gun. "I've only been on planet for -"

"Twenty years?" asked the Master.

"Actually a few weeks," the man answered and looked back. "I did step through a weird doorway a minute ago."

"Ah," the Master said and closed the distance between them. The newcomer smelled like sage and the Ocean. Also gunpowder. "The Time Corridor will do that."

"I assume you were sent here to kill -" the Master started.

"He was annoying," the newcomer interrupted and looked into the Master's rather startling new blue eyes as if trying to puzzle something out.

"I noticed that too," the Master said and leaned down and towards his would-be-assassin's ear. There was something interesting about this anachronistic interloper. "I seem to have an opening for a new assistant," the Master whispered.

"I seem to be not interested," the man replied and cocked his gun, now pressed towards the Master's throat.

Well, that was what the Master got for thinking with his third brain. "Then why -" the Master started to ask, truly puzzled. How had anyone found his Time Corridor?

"My name is Canton Everett Delaware the Third," the stranger whispered in the Master's ear.

"The Doctor says 'Hello'."


	17. Ordering

Killing the Doctor was not going to plan, the Master realized as he felt the barrel of a gun at his throat.

You didn't expect to encounter guns on a pre-industrial planet like Alfalfa-Matraxis. But then, you didn't expect to encounter the Master on a pre-industrial planet like Alfalfa-Matraxis either. The Master may have been a thousand year old homicidal maniac, the last survivor of — and anathema to — an ancient civilization of infinitely wise guardians of peace, order, and impossibly ostentatious collars, but he was also a being of impeccable taste.

You certainly did not expect small men in black suits to travel twenty years through a Dalek Time Corridor to murder you when you least expect it. That was supposed to be his modus operandi.

The whole thing was stunningly disorientating. The Master did not like being disorientated. He liked being in control. He liked his wine to glow ultraviolet and not taste like battery acid. He liked freshly pressed black suits — where had this man gotten his? — and blood on his hands and worlds in chaos. Controlled chaos. Chaos you could win.

Could the Master regenerate if his brains were splattered upon the walls of his secret armory and time room? He admitted that he wasn't sure. Hurm.

It was about this time that the Master realized he had not said anything for at least three minutes. That wouldn't do. The Master might be facing death, but burn it if he was going to fall in silence.

"Does he say anything else?" the Master asked at last.

"Hm?" the small man asked, as if he too had been thinking about what to say next for far too long to actually say anything that didn't sound forced. That was the problem with one-liners. The Master much preferred a good manic monologues. It was an art form, appearing in an unexpected place and murdering someone to make a point. It made follow up performances hard to manage. This man wasn't bad though. He could learn.

"The Doctor," the Master reminded, "does he say anything else besides 'hello'?"

"Oh," the man replied and holstered his gun. Well, that was easy. "No," he went on, "just 'hello'. Got a little trigger happy there. It happens when you've been on an alien planet for a while. At least to me. I think. First time." He shrugged and looked a tad embarrassed. It was actually endearing. "Jumpy," he finished.

"Well," the Master said, relaxing and feeling the relief of his continued existence tingle at his extremities, "you seem to be doing fine so far. Killing my apprentice and all. Traitorous apprentice it appears. Is the Doctor ordering killings now? My, he's usually so innocent with his human hangers on. Virtues and Free Will and the like. Intellect and Romance. Keeps his atrocities on a scale so big your human minds pass it -"

"What orders I have from the Doctor," the man broke in, "are between me and him unless they concern you."

"And do they?" the Master asked, perking up.

"Some," the man — Canton — shrugged.

"Well," the Master said back, "if you'd like to help me kill the Doctor, you could hand me that Eugenic Ray to your left. There's a Transmogrification Beam hanging up there to your left under the Dalek Bump Generator." Canton looked, but didn't move.

"I think you know I won't do that," Canton said, nonchalantly. My, but the Master liked this one.

"I think I know too," the Master said, "but you can never be sure."

"I'm finding that more and more," Canton replied, almost to himself.

"Well, I just had the Doctor send an assassin to save my life while I was on the way to kill him," the Master shrugged, "it's been an odd day. New body too."

"Don't know if I can relate. I just have the one," Canton said, looking over the Master's flowing black robes and raised an eyebrow. Honestly, the Master had tried explaining the concept of a suit to twenty different royal tailors before finally giving up.

"I'll have to get someone to pick that up," said the Master, absently, as he stepped over the body of his traitorous ex-apprentice, "sure you're not interested in the position?"

"Yes," Canton said and studied the rather marvelous, deadly abominations which adorned the walls of the chamber. While the Master was partial to the sword that hung at his side, there was something to be said about the simplicity that a Dalek Deatomizer brought to a problem. The Master watched Canton paced the room. There was a tension in this man, somewhere around the shoulders. In the way he held himself. In the way he had shot first and asked questions later despite, presumably being a companion of the Doctor. That was new. That was... wrong.

"So I suppose I won't be killing the Doctor today?" the Master tried. The answer would have an impact on how and when the Master murdered this newcomer.

"Not today, no," Canton said, back still turned. The Master sighed and began to pad silently behind Canton. He reached for his sword.

"You'll kill the Doctor when I say and no sooner," Canton finished, absently. The Master stopped, sword half unsheathed. He re-sheathed it numbly. What? Had that been a joke?

"Orders," he said, turning, "sorry." The Master looked into Canton's eyes. He was serious.

"Orders," the Master repeated absently. He was going to kill the Doctor... on the Doctor's orders. Well, didn't that just take the fun out of it?

"And if I refuse?" the Master asked, too stunned to really work his head around that option. He should. It would be capricious. The Master could be capricious. Better capricious than the Doctor's lapdog. Honestly, where did the Doctor get off ordering people to kill him like that? What if the Master had things to do? He did have a planet to run. Infants to smother. Wine to drink. Petitioners to disembowel. He was a busy man, the Master. Rarely if ever bored. Hardly a spare mome-

"Then you'll never find the Moon's other half," Canton said. The Master didn't know what Canton was talking about until he did.

He gaped.

Oh. Well. That settled that.

"Ah," the Master began but found nothing to attach the sound to. Well, if he was going to be the Master on the Doctor's orders, he might as well play the part.

The Master grinned a Master-ly grin. He twirled and embraced Canton in a companion-ly hug.

"You know," the Master said, "I think you might be my favorite yet."

"Orders," Canton said, simply, appearing to do his best to remain aloof despite being hugged.

"Rubbish," the Master said, "I had a hairline just like that once. Got shot through the heart. Cleared it right up."

"I don't care," Canton replied.

"I have wine," the Master half-sang. That got his attention. "Best on the planet," he lied.

"Well," Canton said, and raised an eyebrow, "it's been a hell of a day."

"It has," the Master agreed and lead Canton towards the door and into the hallway of glowing golden time.

His sword at his side. A new friend. The deatomizer he had snatched from the wall of the armory. A new body. A contract to kill the Doctor from the man himself?

Yes, the Master could use a drink.


	18. Traveling

"Well he certainly didn't stick around long," Melody remarked, studying the place in the clearing where the ghost named Rigelax had stood just moments before. It was smoldering, as if he had burnt away. But he hadn't. The vision had just faded. She didn't let go of her stick. Best to keep her wits – and stick – about her at all times now that the sequence of events seemed to be moving again.

"Well," the Doctor said distantly, pacing around the smoking patch of ground, then crouching beside it. He wiped his index finger along the dirt, licked it, and began to cough violently, falling onto his side. He spasmed, coughing too frequently to yell, as if having an extreme allergic reaction. Then, as quickly as it began, it stopped. The Doctor sat up, non-perturbed.

"Just as I expected," the Doctor said, smiling as if nothing had happened, "he was an echo – well, a shadow – well, a ghost – well, he was a 6th dimensional echo casting a 5th dimensional shadow into the 4th dimensional aspect of the TARDIS; a ghost to us." Melody nodded, hoping that would speed things along. At least this was better than the Doctor answering questions she hadn't thought to ask yet – maybe.

"There are hundreds of beings like him, swooping around this planet," the Doctor went on, standing at the TARDIS console which itself was embedded crookedly in the soil of the clearing. He leaned on his knuckles as his haggard expression was magnified tenfold by his wispy beard.

"I can hear them now, all rattling about, moaning, whispering," the Doctor looked around, the haunted look not leaving his eyes – could he see things Melody couldn't? – and then went on, "chaotic, directionless, quantum, haunted by the puzzle of their own non-existence. We only saw this particular shadow because the TARDIS flared on. Creates some interesting temporal side-affects. Especially when she's still cooking. Rigelax is still here. All of them are still here." Melody looked around. She didn't see anything other than the sky, the suns, the tops of those blue trees, the pile of bones left over from weeks of midnight snacks. The colors were all still saturated, as if in the wake of a thunderstorm. Was that them? Her resolve to keep her stick about her at all times galvanized.

"Is that important?" Melody asked.

"Important?" the Doctor balked, "there's not supposed to be this level of Time Manipulation – well, any level of Time Manipulation – on Alfalfa-Matraxis for," the Doctor paused, licked his finger, and held it up as if testing the wind, "ever," he finished.

"Even just one of these quantum ghosts is problematic," the Doctor went on. "I'm the only one who gets to play boss with Time. I may have cheated on my exam, but the license office is closed – well, blown up. Whoever is causing this doesn't realize that they're weakening the very fabric of time itself. The time-stream is stretched thin. like tissue – wet tissue." The Doctor touched his chin, balked at the beard he must have forgotten about, then stroked it thoughtfully. "Actually, that's a rubbish metaphor. Disregard. It's more like Time is cheese and they're all bacterial colonies, causing holes." Melody didn't know what bacterial colonies were – wait, wasn't that was Anthrax was? She gulped. Were quantum ghosts some temporal form of germ warfare? Why would someone want to infect cheese? Whoever this Half-King was, he was obviously a brilliant tactician.

"So are we going to do something clever and save the day?" Melody asked, the plots of dozens of comic books flashing around in the back of her head. It was better than that creepy voice ratting off gruesome details about the flesh-eating bacteria, that was sure. The Doctor turned to her and smiled. Gone were the old haunted eyes and the defeated slouch. He exhaled sharply, as if containing a sharp laugh, and picked her up. Somehow, despite weeks of living in an alien forrest, he still smelled of peppermint.

"Of course we are," the Doctor said, his sudden enthusiasm resulting in a shout. He swung Melody onto his shoulders where she watched the Doctor play with the dials, buttons, and household appliances which protruded from what remained of the TARDIS.

"This seems to be a kind-of, sort-of, fantastically amazing job and we are kind-of, sort-of, fantastically amazing individuals," he said, happily, punctuating each and every syllable with the pressing of a button or the turning of a dial.

"And how are we going to do that? Do we have any kind of plan whatsoever?" Melody asked, smiling herself. People who abandoned her in an alien forrest for weeks and still hadn't given her half of the answers she was looking for weren't supposed to be able to make her smile like that. But the Doctor appeared to be a category of people all his own and she was just about through with fighting it.

"Don't know yet," the Doctor said, just as happily as ever, "but we'll figure it out. We know it has something to do with this 'Half-King' our ghostly fellow Rigelax was fretting over. Find him and we find the problem. Find the problem, we can fix it. Probably."

He spun suddenly, and Melody almost fell off of his shoulders. She hung on tighter with her legs.

"Oh! That was a plan!" the Doctor went on, not noticing Melody's efforts to stay upright, "see what happens when I talk?"

"I'm beginning to get the idea," Melody said, partially to herself, partially to the Doctor.

"So we're finding this Half-King?" she asked.

"No," the Doctor answered, still playing with buttons, "we're going to find Canton." Melody had forgotten Canton. They had met so briefly. Where had he gone?

"Why?" Melody asked, "I thought you said this Ghosts and Time-Cheese thing was important."

"Because I made a vow, a long, long time ago to someone very special, to never leave anyone behind again," Melody was silent for moment. Shocked by the weight of the statement by his grandeur - Wait. She rapped him on the head with her stick. Hard.

"Agggggh," the Doctor yelped, "what was that for?"

"That was me!" Melody yelled, "you vowed that to me! Ten minutes ago!"

"Time is relative," the Doctor said, shrugging a shrug that lifted Melody slightly. She couldn't see his face, but she envisioned a sort of knowing smile which would just make her more annoyed, "you'll learn that. Now hold tight. Without the exterior, this is going to be a bumpy ride." He patted the console, laughing, "but you can take it, can't you, Sexy?"

The Doctor flipped a switch and the TARDIS sprung to life. It whooped. It wheezed.

They faded. They vanished.


	19. Surprising

"Well," Canton said, sitting upon the cold iron floor — there was only one chair in the room and the Master had assured him it was not a comfortable one, "it's a nice throne room. Though I'll admit, it's my first. I may not have complex tastes in the matter."

That was evident enough with the Matraxian wine, thought the Master as he watched Canton brace himself for another slug of the brew. Rightly so. To put it in terms of tastes a human tongue could experience, the wine must have tasted as if someone had taken hops and blueberries and then tried to triple distill them. It was, like the best things, an acquired taste. Sadly, that was the end of similarities between Matraxian wine and the "best things." At least it glowed, the Master consoled himself. At least he could pretend he was getting trashed at home.

"Oh," the Master waved the comment away as he took the bottle from Canton, sitting cross-legged next to him, "you're too kind. I've had to fire so many decorators — well, I say 'fire' — they have these underlying design quirks here. All trapezoids and mauve." He winced as he took another gulp from the bottle, swallowed, and handed it back. For that, Canton seemed grateful. My, someone certainly had a taste for the worst things in life. A man after the Master's own hearts. He was giving serious thought to keeping this one.

There was a sly sort of happiness to this man, as if he didn't let himself be cheerful without a concealed edge that could take over when things inevitably turned bloody. Good, the Master could appreciate that in a companion.

Ah, that was a dangerous word: companion. The Master whispered it under his breath as Canton took another slug, too wrapped up in his own little indulgences to hear. So many connotations. And why not? If the Doctor got to drag around whatever hanger-ons he found on that backwater earth, why couldn't the Master abscond with this little trigger happy sidekick. Not that they had anywhere to go, mind you. But, at the moment, the Master didn't care as much. It was good to have company with a fashionable number of heads. It was good to have someone who understood the concept of ingesting fermented liquids. Someone who knew the value of a suit.

"I was wondering about the trapezoids," Canton said, distantly, finishing off the rest of the bottle — the bastard, "you appear to have gone with black." He said and laid down. "A very, very black room," the went on after a long pause, "but it's a nice chair. Throne. Is that solid gold?"

"It is," the Master lied with a smile and laid down himself, floundering about on the cold floor. My but it was a bad idea to be drinking so soon into his regeneration cycle. That was the problem with a new body, your alcohol tolerance was back to square one. Well, you had to start somewhere, the Master thought. Or said aloud. He had quit keeping track.

To his side, Canton nodded. Maybe he had been speaking aloud. Rubbish wine. He should really give it up. Well, he only had seventy three more bottles in the cellar. They'd drink through those this week, kill the Doctor, and then go somewhere with some good wine.

"It's strange," Canton said after a moment, "being so far from home - well, I say home - I mean Earth - or New York - or Washington - or Richard - drinking. It seems such a human thing. Reminds me how long I've been gone. That I've been gone at all. Easy to forget that, rolling from one thing to - I'm sorry what am I talking about?"

"Canton," the Master replied, splayed out and smiling, "there is nothing human about drinking. Honestly, someone needs to broaden your horizons." The Master couldn't see Canton's eyebrow raise, but he could feel it, filling the long pause that erupted between their drunken selves.

"I think you've been beat to that privilege," Canton chuckled, "I did wind up on a genuine alien planet. Two heads and everything."

"Oh, hush," the Master muttered, "you couldn't -"

A sound cut off his sentence. A familiar sound? What was that? Whhhhhhhhrrrrl? Dunk? That was the sound the — Oh. Oh, my.

The Master threw himself off from the floor in an attempt to stand up — a spectacular failure impressive for its enthusiasm if not its coordination. His flailing legs managed to knock the empty bottle out of Canton's startled hands onto the floor, shattering — loud, but not as loud as the wheezing whoop which seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. It was about this point that Canton looked up. Bit slow on the uptake, but he was only human.

"Ah," said the Master as he laid on the floor and the TARDIS materialized in his throne room. The Master squinted as it faded into the time-stream. Well no, not the TARDIS. Just the console — and the Doctor — probably that was the Doctor — what a rubbish beard. Well, that was something. The Master sighed and tried his best to direct a few of his remaining regenerative energies — it had only been an hour after all — towards sobering up. It was like a shot of espresso had been injected directly into his bloodstream or he had inhaled the pollen of a jallax flower. He was manic, with none of his inhibitions standing. Perfect. He stood up.

"Hello, Sweetie," the Master smiled through perfect teeth as the Doctor rushed past him and towards Canton, sitting up and looking dazed.

"Canton," the Doctor yelled, flailing his arms as he crossed the throne room, and knelt at the dazed, suited man. The Master felt slighted. That was a rare feeling for the Master, but it was also a dangerous one.

"Love the beard," Canton said shakily as he looked towards — but not at — the Doctor. Ah, so that was how it was. The Doctor had traversed time and space in half a TARDIS to steal the Master's companion — friend — best friend — well, they weren't best friends yet, temporally speaking — but time was inconsequential to friendship and the Master. And grown a rubbish beard. Was that a new body? Ech. It was a crime against fashion. Worse than the cursed, billowing robes the Master had settled upon.

The Master sighed. You will never find the Moon's other half, echoed in the back of his mind. That was a high price to pay, certainly. Was it worth it? The Doctor squatted at Canton's side, probably diagnosing his drunkenness as some sort of time-sickness or Matraxian flu. The Master's hand twitched at the sword affixed to his side. It would be so easy. But Canton had said — well, Canton was rather drunk. Perhaps this was when he was supposed to kill the Doctor. And if not, well, under enough torture for a long enough time, anyone would crack. Maybe the Master would get the Doctor's death and the Moon's other half — and on his time. Yes, it was really the only logical sequence of events. One had to be realistic about these things.

The Master shrugged. In one fluid motion, he unsheathed his sword and brought it down unto the Doctor, back turned, ending him forever.

Except that wasn't what happened. The Master unsheathed his sword, and brought it down, only to have — something — what was that? — a frizzy orange blur — swoop over. It caught the sword between the palms of its hands, crashing into the Doctor's crouched figure. The Doctor barely had time to go 'Waaaaa' before the interloper twisted its hands, shattering the Master's blade.

Huh.

"Well," the Master said after a stunned silence, "can't blame a man for trying." The eyes that met him — oh, the frizz had eyes — disproved the statement. They were hard eyes, full of anger. Quite unreasonable, really. He raised a finger and but stopped. Hard to argue with eyes like those, really.

"I'm the Master, by the way," the Master said, not moving an inch.

Then something — a blur — was she a little girl? — nonsense, girls couldn't move that fast — punched him in the solar plexus.

There was a sensation of surprise, being airborne, crashing, and, at last, pain.


	20. Diagnosing

Melody looked over at the robed figure, now muttering to himself, sprawled out on the floor at the other end of the room.

"Just saved your life, you know," she called back to the Doctor, at Canton's side.

"That's nice," the Doctor replied, unconcerned. He pulled back one of Canton's eyelids, looking closely. Then he pulled something metal with a green tip. He turned it on. Suddenly, thousands of tiny green lines erupted from the device. They reached out, touched everything, then plunged in to the Doctor's forehead. The Doctor frowned, looking at the device, then he closed his eyes and put his hand to Canton's sweaty forehead.

"The hell was that?" Melody asked, unnerved.

"Oh right," the Doctor smiled, "forgot you could see sound — well, hyper-sonic frequencies. Not usually a trait of my traveling companions. That was the sonic screwdriver. It tells me things — does little jobs. Funny thing, sou-" The Doctor was cut off by Canton's groaning.

"What did you do?" Canton asked, groggily.

"Your blood alcohol levels were staggering," the Doctor chided, "So I sonic-ed them back to biological norms — well, close enough. You're going to get a five-minute hangover in about two hours. Don't know why, but that's how it works. It will feel like your eyes are bleeding into your ears but it's an impermanent sensation." The Doctor picked up the empty bottle that laid beside the short, bewildered man.

"Really, Canton," the Doctor scolded, "first time on an alien world and you're smashed on slugs of —" the Doctor turned the empty bottle over as one drop dripped onto his index finger. He tasted it and stopped. "Gallifreyan wine," the Doctor said softly. Then he puckered and spat. "Horrid, horrid Gallifreyan wine. Like someone tried to make a cup of tea with compost chips and vinegar. Blagh." Was "Gallifreyan" a real word, Melody wondered, or a rubbish made-up one like "biological".

The Doctor stood and, for the first time, looked around at the poorly lit, black throne room. Black except for an exceedingly well lit golden chair in the center.

"We're in a throne room," Melody informed him.

"We're in the Half-King's throne room," the Doctor said, brow furrowed, "the quantum ghosts are … angry — and dense." Then he brightened, pulled Canton up, and dusted him up. "See? I told you to just follow the sequence of events. Works out great every time. One of the Twelve Laws of Time." He patted Canton on the back.

The last thirty seconds seemed to have taken a toll on Canton, Melody considered. It might have been the whiplash of forced sobriety. He was stunned, blinking. Shaking his head.

"Is he going to be alright?" Melody cocked her head and walked over to them.

"Most likely," the Doctor said, studying the man's face, "just give him a bit of time to adjust. Humans tend to be an adaptable bunch, but it's best not to rub in how much of a leg up we —"

"We?" a voice from across the room interrupted. Melody turned. Great, she should have hit him harder. The Doctor turned, surprised, as a black robed figure pulled himself up to a standing position and staggered towards him. He raised the hilt of his sword before realizing it was only the hilt, the blade shattered in Melody's haste. He made a disgusted look and tossed it over his shoulder.

"I'll say it again," the black robed figure drawled, "Hello, Sweetie. Like the new look?" The Doctor stared, dumbfounded and cocked his head.

"River?" the Doctor asked at last, a strange mixture of shock and annoyance."You're the Half-King?"

"Who's River?" Melody and the man in black robes asked simultaneously. The Doctor looked at Canton who seemed to have recovered from the sequence of events. He shook his head at the Doctor and mouthed something that Melody couldn't quite make out. The Doctor's eyes widened in shock.

"Master?" he said, squinting at the figure. The figure smiled a broad smiled that showed off too many teeth and twirled. "The Master," the Doctor whispered, awe saturating his voice and posture.

"I do love hearing you say my name," the Master said. There was something between these two, Melody was sure. She wasn't sure why the Doctor was so surprised. This man was obviously a total loon. "I notice you've made some changes since we saw each other last as well," the Master went on, closing the distance between he and the Doctor, "bit raggedy, don't you think?"

The black clad Master put a hand, now glowing, to the Doctor's scraggly-bearded cheek. It burned. Well, no, Melody realized, not burned. There was no smoke. It was like the beard dissolved into golden light. It was beautiful and unnerving in the moments before Melody realized it was exactly what happened when she died — regenerated. Was this man like them? Was he a Time Lord?

"That's better," the Master smirked to the dumbfounded Doctor, "mind you, with so much chin, I see why you would grow that rubbish thing. Last of my regeneration energy. You can thank me —"

"You died," the Doctor said, distantly, only partially to the man before him. "You forced the High Council of Gallifrey back into the Time War."

"Yes," the Master agreed, "and then I broke out again. Well, technically, Davros broke out. But I stowed away on a ship — well, I say stowed away — more like stole — well, more like destroyed and rode the wreckage. Believe me, if I had the makings of even a partially working ship, I wouldn't be here."

"You've been here for -" the Doctor said, looking over at Canton for help.

"Two decades," Canton broke in.

"You too?" the Doctor said with a yelp that might have been guilt.

"No," Canton shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Few months maybe. Got recruited into a holy war. Stepped through a magic door."

"Dalek Time Corridor?" The Doctor turned to the Master and squinted accusingly.

"What?" The Master retorted, not at all put off, "Can't you smell it on me?" Melody was just about done with this. The Doctor and the Master were standing all together too close to one another and hadn't they just popped in to grab Canton and find her family? This was the Half-King? Fine. Melody padded over to the TARDIS console on the cold iron floors. She was going to get her big stick and end this.

"Can we just get going?" Melody called back from the console.

"Does nothing stay buried?" the Doctor mused, totally ignoring Melody. Still quite inappropriately close to the other man's personal space. Melody looked pleadingly at Canton who shrugged, rolled his eyes, and walked over to where Melody was. They sat down against the TARDIS console and watched the drama unfold.

"Surprised?" the Master asked, splaying out his arms. The Doctor folded his own.

"More disappointed. For a moment there, I thought the Vinter had made it out of the Time War alive."

"No such luck I'm afraid," the Master tisked, "Though non-existence suits him better, I think. He wouldn't want to live in a version of reality with Gallifreyan wine this horrendous." From somewhere, the Master produced a bottle. He presented it to the Doctor, who didn't react. The Master shrugged and threw it up into the air. It landed with a brittle, wet shattering on the other side of the room.

"So it's just the Earth plan all over again? Landed on a planet. Decided to set yourself up as some petty monarch, building a new Gallifrey to take on the universe by -"

"Ugh, I wish. These bloody stupid two-headed … things. Can't pull off an industrial revolution to save their own skins — literally — it's actually sort of astounding. I felt like contacting the Guide about it, but I don't think anyone would want to read that entry. So I've had to improvise a bit..." The Master trailed off as he gestured to his own expansive thrown room.

"A utopia built on human suffering?" the Doctor glared accusingly. The Master looked taken aback.

"Oh Doctor, nothing so grand," he patted him on the shoulder consolingly, "though you were downright prescient with the last bit. Am I getting predictable?"

"You were always predictable," the Doctor said, his face hard.

"Can I hit him?" Melody called from where she and Canton sat. The Doctor turned and smiled, the stone vanishing in a second from his features.

"Later, if you're good," the Doctor said waving.

"Can I shoot him?" Canton asked, then turned to Melody smiling. Melody smiled back.

"Canton, you tease," the Master looked over with a look of mock-hurt. Then he turned back to the Doctor.

"Who's she?" he asked. "You said 'we'. She's not just another one of those human you acquire. Though I have to say, I like the balding one."

"I don't know if that's a compliment," the Doctor cocked his head.

"Oh, believe me," the Master smiled back, "it's the best kind of compliment. It means he gets to live."

"She's a Time Lord," the Doctor said, beginning to circle the Master.

"Oh don't tell me," the Master looked disgusted, "Romana took the little girl thing a bridge too far?"

"No," the Doctor responded, "she's a new one." The Master's eyebrow raised. He slapped the Doctor stomach.

"Doctor," the Master laughed, "you devil. You're repopulating Gallifrey — what? — one tawdry companion at a time? My oh my, was I wrong about you."

"She's not my — " the Doctor began then stopped. " Mine — she's not mine," he finished. The Master shrugged.

"As you say," he said and strolled over to the TARDIS console — to Melody. She tensed and went for her stick. The Master stopped, held out his hands,and gave Melody a calming look one might give a snarling pit bull.

"Now now," the Master cooed. "You can hit things. You've made that perfectly clear." He knelt beside her. Melody didn't like this man. He smelled of wine and death. But the Doctor wasn't reacting, just looked on closely.

"She was conceived in the TARDIS," the Doctor said, restrained. "Some Anglicans stole her, experimented on her, took her the rest of the way from her auspicious start."

"Towards what end?" the Master asked, distantly, some of the mania fading from his face. Melody really didn't like this -

"Killing me," the Doctor said, after a long pause. Melody stopped. What had he -

The Master fell over backwards, laughing.

"Oh my," the Master said, gasping for breath, "that's perfect. Dedicate all your time into fixing their messes and then they do the impossible, create the first in a new race of Time Lords - straight out of the legends of Gallifrey Fallen - all of this - to kill you." The Master collapsed into giggles.

"Did they not have my number?" he asked at last, pulling himself up and kneeling back at Melody's side. "I could have saved them considerable effort." The mania fled from his features once more his inspection continued.

"Except she's not just a Time Lord," the Doctor went on. Melody perked up, the implications of the Doctor's previous worlds still running through her head. "She's too strong. Too fast. And she can't stop regenerating. Sometimes she burns through a body in less than a day." So the Doctor had remembered parts of Melody's struggles in the clearing.

"You made a good decision bringing her to me," the Master recovered, looking into Melody's eyes entirely too deeply. "I am the universe's foremost expert in regenerative properties."

"That's just a stupid, made-up title," the Doctor shot back, tension cutting through his tone.

"So is 'The Doctor'," the Master smiled and looked into Melody's ears, holding back the frizzy growth of hair her body was currently sporting.

"When you regenerate," the Master asked, "does it hurt?" The coldness was gone with the mania from his face. There was a deep interest and intellect behind those strikingly blue eyes.

"Sometimes," Melody replied, almost unable to help herself. Canton, beside her, looked concerned, "it's like I'm tired. Like there's an ache behind my eyes." The Master nodded.

"Doctor," the Master began, standing up, "have you ever been to the planet Scadrial?"

"A few times," the Doctor replied, frowning. The Master eyes brightened.

"Really?" said the Master, "Before or after the Industrial Revolution? Now there was a planet that could transition in a space faring -"

"Before," the Doctor cut him off, not indulging.

"Well," the Master went on, "on Scadrial, there were these special people who could store things — strength, speed, health, youth, knowledge — to be recovered later. They would spend a few days weaker than usual, only to burn through the strength they had saved up all at once." Melody balked. The combat implications were —

"I'm aware," the Doctor said. "But she's not —"

"No," the Master nodded thoughtfully, agreeing, "but we're Time Lords, or close enough. We don't experience all of our moments linearly." The Doctor nodded. The Master went on.

"She isn't storing her strength, but I think she's burning the strength and speed — maybe even psychic ability — that she would ever potentially have in her lifetime."

"I'm going to die," Melody cut in, shocked. "I can't stop. This is just how -"

"You're not going to die," the Doctor looked over at her, concerned but hard. "Everyone dies, but not today, not now. Do you understand me, Melody Pond?" Canton put his hand on her shoulder, trying to look reassuring even though he no likely understood almost nothing of what had preceded. Melody empathized.

"He's right," the Master smiled, self-satisfied, "you're not going to die — or, rather, you have died. You've died dozens of times. And when Time Lords die..."

"We regenerate," Melody finished.

"See?" the Master smiled, and turned to the Doctor. "She's not dying. Just on the cutting edge of a rather good idea."

"But the limit -" the Doctor cut in.

"Doesn't apply," the Master chided. "It was an artificial construct to keep us in line. Rassilon didn't want us living forever — or Omega — take your pick."

"No," the Doctor muttered, "there was another." The Master shrugged.

"As you like," the Master agreed, "it took three-hundred and twenty-three regenerations to burn all that skulls and lightening nonsense out of my system. Since then, I've taken a rather different perspective onto the whole endeavor. Identity is such a limiting concept, isn't it? What body is that for you?"

"Eleven," the Doctor admitted. The Master balked and laughed.

"Really? You're just one lifetime away from hubris, humanity, and long-coats?"

"I happen to like mysel-"

"Oh please!" The Master said between giggles, "you hate yourself. You just know that a new bone structure and set of quirks won't do anything to change it. Really, Doctor."

"And what's your excuse?" the Doctor shot back.

"Oh," the Master sighed, "boredom — mostly — never thought I would miss the incessant drumming."

"So I'm fine?" Melody cut in.

"Well," the Master said, "if I had to guess. Whoever made you — they psychically reset some specifications in your hyper-thalmus. You're automatically burning through your strength and speed. If we work at it, I'm sure you can only do it when you want to. I'll have to look into the skill-set too."

"And what gives you the idea you'll be doing that?" the Doctor cut in.

"Oh," the Master turned to him, "I didn't think you'd mind — what with being dead and all?" From somewhere in his black flowing sleeves, he produced a silver instrument.

"A sonic screwdriver!" Miri balked and lunged for her stick. It was incinerated in a shrill yellow light.

"Oh, please," the Master drawled, "laser screwdriver. But I think the forty guards that have been on their way to my throne room since you arrived will be more than enough to dispose of you, my dear Doctor." There was a pounding at the door.

"Try to get at the TARDIS and I'll incinerate the girl. That goes for you too, Canton," the Master balked.

The Doctor just stared at — what was he staring at? Not her, Melody thought. Wasn't she in trouble? She followed the Doctor's line of sight to something she didn't understand.

"I'm afraid your guards don't matter," the Doctor said, with an edge that could slice through photons.

"Oh please," the Master responded, "of course they matter. They're going to kill you, weren't you listening. What are you — " he turned and paled.

"Oh," Canton said, turning, "I didn't know you were religious."

In the middle of the throne room, inches away from the Doctor, stood a stone angel, its eyes covered. Strange, Melody hadn't noticed that before.

"Oh you unbelievable idiot," the Doctor whispered, horrified "what have you wrought?"


	21. Interlude: Slaying

The planet Arronai had not always been empty. It still wasn't, depending on how you looked at it. If you judged by sentient inhabitants, by thriving wild beasts, by ozone churning vegetation, then no, it was a dead planet. But if you just went by just life itself i its most basic forms- well, it was still dead.

Except just off the very southern tip of the Geniban continent, amidst the yellow mists of sulfur, within the churning auburn sea, there was the island of Norros, where the dragons lived- and so too the man who killed them.

 _Slayed_. You didn't kill dragons. You slayed them. John was certain of only a few, terrible things, but this was one of them.

John was old. Impossibly old. Hadn't his mother told him that people didn't live this long? Hadn't he a mother? Sometimes he remembered. More often he remembered remembering and cursed the man he remembered himself. Without remembering why, of course, but old curses were bitter curses and John's were oldest of all.

Every muscle ached as John woke. They always did. As far back as he could... right. Memory. He was sick of it. Memory and the holes that it left. Wasn't it enough for him to be what he was now? John the Dragon Slayer. How might that have sounded to a bright eyed boy out to see the night sky and gaze at its wonders.

John's beard grazed the floor beneath him as he walked the cottage towards the kettle. Tea. Even Hell was not so cruel as to deny a man _some_ staples. Hadn't there been something else? No, there was tea. Just tea. And dragons. All the dragons you could eat. But that was not a thought for breakfast. At breakfast you tried to forget the poor things, even has you chomped down upon them. It was hypocrisy. It was what made you human. And John was nothing if not human. This had been made clear to him extensively by... someone. There he was again, remembering. What a mockery of breakfast. John drained his tea and stood. The day began.

The trick was to start with the females. If you slayed primarily the females, you wound up killing fewer dragons in the long term. Maybe. It didn't feel that way. But someone had done the math years ago. Someone smart and someone who understood the necessity of the task- the necessity of John's place in it. Sometimes John still wondered what happened to him.

All the Dragons in the world fit into one coup. The coup, granted, was three miles end to end, but it was all the same coup. With the un-dome projecting the best artificial skies and sunlight and the fresh air into the facility, you could sometimes even pretend that it wasn't a dead planet that waited patiently outside.

John shrugged off his long, patched coat and stepped towards the datacore. Opening his eyes enough for the retinal scan to verify his identify- as if anyone else would live on this doomed, death-stained hell- he was greeted with the charge of the day. Six.

It would be a six dragon day, wouldn't it? It felt like one of them. No, all days felt the same these days. He just pretended differently in retrospect.

He didn't even allow himself a sigh as he entered the chamber. It was a shining metallic room. The same treatment which kept the blood from staining its surface also kept away most grime and tarnish that might have otherwise accumulated over the years. At the far wall was a bench. Above was a gate. John sat and waited.

The automated bell let out chime, signaling the first of the day. The gate clanged open and a bright green dragon flew lazily into the chamber. It was a small one, barely a hand long. It let out a tiny ball of fire in happiness, and came to sit on John's shoulder.

"Sree!" it cried, happily, its wings curling back as it rammed its nose into John's face.

"Hush now, little one," John whispered. Still, he couldn't keep from smiling. He put his finger on his shoulder and the dragon promptly perched upon it with tiny obsidian nails. He brought her down to face him.

"I think I'll name you Ophie," he said, stroking his long white beard thoughtfully. He never named two dragons the same. It was impolite. They were all different. All of them hatching forth into their tiny world, full of all the things they would ever know. Everything new and bright and interesting. It wouldn't do to call any of them the same thing. There had been many dragons though. It was sometimes hard to think of a new name. John hoped he didn't ever accidentally repeat himself. "You look like an Ohpie." He leaned in and whispered, "Don't tell anyone, but it's short for Ophelia." The dragon squawked and stretched it's wings in solemn promise.

"There's a good little dragon," John cooed and tickled the little creature in the soft spot between her long, coiled neck and her breastbone. Dragons went bonkers when you tickled them there. Ophie cried in sudden ecstasy as her neck shot out rigid and she released a chemical plume of highly flammable vapors. When he rang her neck, it was a quick and painless thing. He had done this for so long. He was very good at making it painless.

Ophie lay still on the floor, her scales draining of luminescence rapidly. The only consolation that John had was that, even now, he couldn't slay them without weeping- if only just a little bit. But he had liked Ophie. She had nudged him and taken his finger and had been gentle, as if she had been worried about the silly, old dragon slayer

He was still sobbing into his beard when the bell chimed a second time and the process began again.

There was a man waiting for John as he shambled back to his hut. Dark skin, a bald head, a long green coat, and the highest cheekbones John had ever seen. He wasn't smiling, which was only appropriate on Arronai.

"Has it been a hundred years already?" John asked, cocking his head.

"A hundred and a day," the man said. At his waistcoat was a cold iron pocket-watch. It swayed in the sulfurous breeze.

"Seemed longer," John admitted.

"Do you remember me?" the man asked. John looked behind him. There was a blue... something, standing against his hut. It didn't belong. None of them belonged on Arronai.

"No," John admitted. He remembered someone, maybe, sometimes, but it was never the dark man draped in green who now stood before him. Sometimes he remembered bright blue eyes and a girl- hadn't there been a girl?

"Do you remember why you're here?"

"No," John confirmed. "But I've done some thinking in the interim."

"Thinking is good," said the tall man. The watch kept swinging. If he shut his eyes, John could almost imagine it tick with each sway. John had nothing to say to this. Was thinking good? It was all he had. Thinking and slaying and all the time in the world to do them.

"The Dragons of Arronai," the man went on, looking up to the sulfur clouds. "Meant to soar the heavens, taking man to the skies in the final phases of the Gene Wars. Do you ever-" he looked to John and stopped. "No, of course you don't."

"They die so horribly," John whispered. He had seen what happened when he shirked his duty- when he pitied the poor dragons and took them to his hut. Wrenched, expanding gullets, internal explosions which wrenched out intestines but left their victims ceaselessly, horribly _alive_. It was not right.

"They were poorly designed," the man said. "Doomed to die the moment they are born. Their biology is a mess of organic napalm and hollow bones." The man looked at John, then to his hut, and nodded.

"There's a failsafe," he said, "on the coup. Execute command-"

"Zee, Zee, Plural, Alfa, Twenty-Eight, Fourteen," John finished for him. "It incinerates the coup, killing them all at once." The man's golden eyes widened in shock. Somehow, John found that his voice was stronger, his mind was clearer. What did it have to do with the cold, black watch, ticking endlessly in the back of his head?

"You knew?"

"I'm not stupid," John said. "Even now I'm not stupid."

"Then why haven't you..." the man began, softly.

"Ended them all?" John asked, caustic words bursting forth for the first time in a century. "Because it's not their fault. The poor dragons. They didn't ask for this. They just want to fly and love and be dragons. They deserve flight and all the life they can have in the three years before they're burst prone. They deserve _names_." He didn't know when it was that he started shouting.

"You slay them," the man said, his golden eyes narrowing. The sentence was somewhere between a call to reason and an accusation.

"One at a time," John shot back. Oh, how he hated this man. Why did he hate this man? They'd never even met.

The man sighed and turned to walk away. He vanished into the yellow mists. John could hear the creak of the blue house opening and the slam of it's door. He was alone. Quite right. He was-

The door opened once more. The man's green coat came swishing out of the mists. He was- there wasn't a word in John's vocabulary for what he saw in the man's eyes. With a sudden motion, he broke the chain on the cold iron watch and put it firmly in John's gnarled hand.

"Damn you," the man cursed. He breathed deep and coughed at the acrid air. Looking back to John, he hesitated. "When you're ready," he said, and walked back into the mists.

John stood with the black pocket-watch for some time. The ticking was stronger and, perhaps, picking up pace. He couldn't account for its weight. It would be such a simple thing to- No. John slipped the watch into his patched coat and walked towards his simple hut. There may be a day for that, but it was not this day. There was work to be done and the Dragons who needed him. He shut the door behind him and prepared for tomorrow's fresh hell.


End file.
